Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand

[dequeen]

Whoever you are holding me now in hand,

Without one thing all will be useless,

I give you fair warning before you attempt me further,

I am not what you supposed, but far different.

Who is he that would become my follower?

Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?

The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps

destructive,

You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect

to be your sole and exclusive standard,

Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,

The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to

the lives around you would have to be abandon’d,

Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any

further, let go your hand from my shoulders,

Put me down and depart on your way.

Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,

Or back of a rock in the open air,

(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in

company,

And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or

dead,)

But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching

lest any person for miles around approach unawares,

Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the

sea or some quiet island,

Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,

With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new

husband’s kiss,

For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,

Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon

your hip,

Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;

For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,

And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be

carried eternally.

But these leaves conning you con at peril,

For these leaves and me you will not understand,

They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will

certainly elude you,

Even while you should think you had unquestionably

caught me, behold!

Already you see I have escaped from you.

For it is not for what I have put into it that I have

written this book,

Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,

Nor do those know me best who admire me and

vauntingly praise me,

Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very

few) prove victorious,

Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much

evil, perhaps more,

For all is useless without that which you may guess at

many times and not hit, that which I hinted at;

Therefore release me and depart on your way.

[Calllaris]

A beloved.

A 'he' or a book.

[dequeen]

IMO ; money / the pursuit of riches.

[Fummy]

I want to assume the writer is a female, she was warning someone of her emotional mumbo jumbo. First, she loves you, she expects you to abandon everything else n love her only, she is all clingy and needy and then she's aloof, perhaps realizing that she didn't really love the person like she thought she did. I think she is talking about being emotionally unavailable so she is warning anyone who catches her interest now that there's a possibility of the interest fading away and is advising the person to let go and not be too deeply involved . Just when you think you have her , you realize you don't . That's what I think .

[dequeen]

I feel like its money speaking through these lines. Telling those who would set out in pursuit of it to know what they are about getting themselves into. Money expects you to leave all else in pursuit of it and many have lost their family and friends to it. Some have attained its love, only to lose it again and start from a level lower than they even were before the initial attainment. Money talks about not coming to you in libraries or in the company of others which is true because most great ideas were birth in solitude, by the beach or under a tree, perhaps in a forest or under the rain or inner solitude when the recipient was on the verge of committing suicide.

it says it escapes just when you think you have caught it. When you listen to people who almost closed a major deal only to miss it, you will understand that line. I knew someone who closed a deal and the money was brought but he was scared that since it was night, he could be robbed so he told the buyer to take the ghana-must-go bag of money and give him the next day, as the buyer arrived his house, his house was ablaze. the deal was off. Just when he thought he had it, puff! it was gone.

I could go on and on analyzing each line but you get the picture.