There is little breathing room in the space between biography and tragedy.
Inevitability is both grace and zero ground, the fuel of fate, the fire of fortune.
It must have seemed an Eden at first, trees waving pleasantly across the border, the idyllic land where a man might find the spirit of himself, the love of the world it entailed. You crossed over with ease, a soul slip ping over Jordan, a free place, a free land. O Whitman, your soul ran aground on its own stillness. Your screams took root and planted themselves in our grievous solemnity, and we apologise, apologise humbly, sure that our failures will be absolved by your dreams, dreamed once and forgotten, years after a time of madness. The Thames, slow, old, beguiled his muses with flat repetitions of native sound until all he would hear was his own need to be heard.