Portraits from the artist's collection of vintage 
photobooth snapshots.

Ether

Nor the cause of

Multitudes by Matt Kane

Wrapped Ether

OpenSea

“  
  Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the  
”

“  
As If a Phantom Caress’d Me  
  As if a phantom caress’d me,  
  I thought I was not alone walking here by the shore;  
  But the one I thought was with me as now I walk by the shore, the  
      one I loved that caress’d me,  
  As I lean and look through the glimmering light, that one has  
      utterly disappear’d.  
  And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me.  
”

And those appear that are hateful to me and mock me

“  
  Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;  
  Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.  
  Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.  
  The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,  
  The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;  
  The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;  
  To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns,  
”

Ample are time and space

“  
  The log at the wood-pile, the axe supported by it,  
  The sylvan hut, the vine over the doorway, the space clear’d for garden,  
  The irregular tapping of rain down on the leaves after the storm is lull’d,  
  The walling and moaning at intervals, the thought of the sea,  
  The thought of ships struck in the storm and put on their beam ends,  
      and the cutting away of masts,  
  The sentiment of the huge timbers of old-fashion’d houses and barns,  
  The remember’d print or narrative, the voyage at a venture of men,  
      families, goods,  
  The disembarkation, the founding of a new city,  
  The voyage of those who sought a New England and found it, the outset  
      anywhere,  
  The settlements of the Arkansas, Colorado, Ottawa, Willamette,  
  The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;  
  The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,  
  The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men with their clear untrimm’d faces,  
  The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,  
  The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless  
      impatience of restraint,  
  The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the  
      solidification;  
  The butcher in the slaughter-house, the hands aboard schooners and  
      sloops, the raftsman, the pioneer,  
  Lumbermen in their winter camp, daybreak in the woods, stripes of  
      snow on the limbs of trees, the occasional snapping,  
  The glad clear sound of one’s own voice, the merry song, the natural  
      life of the woods, the strong day’s work,  
  The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the  
      bed of hemlock-boughs and the bear-skin;  
  The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,  
  The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,  
  The hoist-up of beams, the push of them in their places, laying them  
      regular,  
  Setting the studs by their tenons in the mortises according as they  
      were prepared,  
  The blows of mallets and hammers, the attitudes of the men, their  
      curv’d limbs,  
  Bending, standing, astride the beams, driving in pins, holding on by  
      posts and braces,  
  The hook’d arm over the plate, the other arm wielding the axe,  
  The floor-men forcing the planks close to be nail’d,  
  Their postures bringing their weapons downward on the bearers,  
  The echoes resounding through the vacant building:  
  The huge storehouse carried up in the city well under way,  
  The six framing-men, two in the middle and two at each end, carefully  
      bearing on their shoulders a heavy stick for a cross-beam,  
  The crowded line of masons with trowels in their right hands rapidly  
      laying the long side-wall, two hundred feet from front to rear,  
  The flexible rise and fall of backs, the continual click of the  
      trowels striking the bricks,  
  The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place,  
      and set with a knock of the trowel-handle,  
  The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the  
      steady replenishing by the hod-men;  
  Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices,  
  The swing of their axes on the square-hew’d log shaping it toward  
      the shape of a mast,  
  The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine,  
  The butter-color’d chips flying off in great flakes and slivers,  
  The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes,  
  The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats,  
      stays against the sea;  
  The city fireman, the fire that suddenly bursts forth in the  
      close-pack’d square,  
  The arriving engines, the hoarse shouts, the nimble stepping and daring,  
  The strong command through the fire-trumpets, the falling in line,  
      the rise and fall of the arms forcing the water,  
  The slender, spasmic, blue-white jets, the bringing to bear of the  
      hooks and ladders and their execution,  
  The crash and cut away of connecting wood-work, or through floors  
      if the fire smoulders under them,  
  The crowd with their lit faces watching, the glare and dense shadows;  
  The forger at his forge-furnace and the user of iron after him,  
  The maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer,  
  The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel and trying the  
      edge with his thumb,  
  The one who clean-shapes the handle and sets it firmly in the socket;  
  The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also,  
  The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers,  
  The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice,  
  The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,  
  The antique European warrior with his axe in combat,  
  The uplifted arm, the clatter of blows on the helmeted head,  
  The death-howl, the limpsy tumbling body, the rush of friend and foe  
      thither,  
  The siege of revolted lieges determin’d for liberty,  
  The summons to surrender, the battering at castle gates, the truce  
      and parley,  
  The sack of an old city in its time,  
  The bursting in of mercenaries and bigots tumultuously and disorderly,  
  Roar, flames, blood, drunkenness, madness,  
  Goods freely rifled from houses and temples, screams of women in the  
      gripe of brigands,  
  Craft and thievery of camp-followers, men running, old persons despairing,  
  The hell of war, the cruelties of creeds,  
  The list of all executive deeds and words just or unjust,  
  The power of personality just or unjust.  
”

The slow progress

“  
  My single soul--aims, confirmations, failures, joys--Nor single soul alone,  
  I chant my nation’s crucial stage, (America’s, haply humanity’s)--  
      the trial great, the victory great,  
  A strange eclaircissement of all the masses past, the eastern world,  
      the ancient, medieval,  
  Here, here from wanderings, strayings, lessons, wars, defeats--here  
      at the west a voice triumphant--justifying all,  
  A gladsome pealing cry--a song for once of utmost pride and satisfaction;  
  I chant from it the common bulk, the general average horde, (the  
      best sooner than the worst)--And now I chant old age,  
  (My verses, written first for forenoon life, and for the summer’s,  
      autumn’s spread,  
  I pass to snow-white hairs the same, and give to pulses  
      winter-cool’d the same;)  
  As here in careless trill, I and my recitatives, with faith and love,  
  wafting to other work, to unknown songs, conditions,  
  On, on ye jocund twain! continue on the same!  
MY 71st Year  
  After surmounting three-score and ten,  
  With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows,  
  My parents’ deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing  
      passions of me, the war of ’63 and ’4,  
  As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or  
      haply after battle,  
  To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call, Here,  
      with vital voice,  
  Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all.  
Apparitions  
  A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages:  
  (Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,  
  That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,  
      non-realities.)  
The Pallid Wreath  
  Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,  
  Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,  
  With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch’d, and the white now gray and ashy,  
  One wither’d rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;  
  But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?  
  Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?  
  No, while memories subtly play--the past vivid as ever;  
  For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,  
  Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:  
  So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,  
”

The Pallid Wreath

“  
  Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)  
  Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,  
  Straight and swift to my wounded I go,  
  Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,  
  Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,  
  Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital,  
  To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,  
  To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,  
  An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,  
  Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again.  
  I onward go, I stop,  
  With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,  
  I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,  
  One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you,  
  Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that  
      would save you.  
  On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)  
  The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)  
  The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through examine,  
  Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life  
      struggles hard,  
  (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!  
  In mercy come quickly.)  
  From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,  
  I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,  
  Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head,  
  His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the  
      bloody stump,  
  And has not yet look’d on it.  
  I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep,  
  But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking,  
  And the yellow-blue countenance see.  
  I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound,  
  Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening,  
      so offensive,  
  While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail.  
  I am faithful, I do not give out,  
  The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,  
  These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast  
      a fire, a burning flame.)  
  Thus in silence in dreams’ projections,  
  Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,  
  The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,  
  I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,  
”

poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away

“  
  The shapes arise!  
  Shapes of factories, arsenals, foundries, markets,  
  Shapes of the two-threaded tracks of railroads,  
  Shapes of the sleepers of bridges, vast frameworks, girders, arches,  
  Shapes of the fleets of barges, tows, lake and canal craft, river craft,  
  Ship-yards and dry-docks along the Eastern and Western seas, and in  
      many a bay and by-place,  
  The live-oak kelsons, the pine planks, the spars, the  
      hackmatack-roots for knees,  
  The ships themselves on their ways, the tiers of scaffolds, the  
      workmen busy outside and inside,  
  The tools lying around, the great auger and little auger, the adze,  
      bolt, line, square, gouge, and bead-plane.  
”

The shapes arise!

“  
  Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes,  
”

nor all sent back by the echoes

“  
  In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a  
”

the flowing glaze

“  
  Passage to India!  
  Lo, soul, seest thou not God’s purpose from the first?  
  The earth to be spann’d, connected by network,  
  The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage,  
  The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near,  
  The lands to be welded together.  
”

not God’s purpose

“  
  How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.  
”

more than he

“  
  I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,  
  And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.  
”

more needed

“  
  Here are our thoughts, voyagers’ thoughts,  
  Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said,  
  The sky o’erarches here, we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,  
  We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion,  
  The tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the  
      briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables,  
  The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,  
  The boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here,  
  And this is ocean’s poem.  
”

the horizon far and dim

“  
  Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not  
”

a thousand beautiful forms

“  
How Solemn As One by One [Washington City, 1865]  
  How solemn as one by one,  
  As the ranks returning worn and sweaty, as the men file by where stand,  
”

as the men file by

“  
  (What is this that frees me so in storms?  
  What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)  
  O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!  
  O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,  
  I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)  
  O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me  
      in defiance of the world!  
  O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!  
  O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of  
      a determin’d man.  
  O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all  
      untied and illumin’d!  
  O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!  
  To be absolv’d from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and  
      you from yours!  
  To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!  
  To have the gag remov’d from one’s mouth!  
  To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.  
  O something unprov’d! something in a trance!  
  To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!  
  To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!  
  To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!  
  To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!  
  To rise thither with my inebriate soul!  
  To be lost if it must be so!  
  To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!  
  With one brief hour of madness and joy.  
”

To escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds

“  
  With husky-haughty lips, O sea!  
  Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore,  
  Imaging to my sense thy varied strange suggestions,  
  (I see and plainly list thy talk and conference here,)  
  Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to the goal,  
  Thy ample, smiling face, dash’d with the sparkling dimples of the sun,  
  Thy brooding scowl and murk--thy unloos’d hurricanes,  
  Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness;  
  Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears--a lack from all  
      eternity in thy content,  
  (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee  
      greatest--no less could make thee,)  
  Thy lonely state--something thou ever seek’st and seek’st, yet  
      never gain’st,  
  Surely some right withheld--some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of  
      freedom-lover pent,  
  Some vast heart, like a planet’s, chain’d and chafing in those breakers,  
  By lengthen’d swell, and spasm, and panting breath,  
  And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves,  
  And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter,  
  And undertones of distant lion roar,  
  (Sounding, appealing to the sky’s deaf ear--but now, rapport for once,  
  A phantom in the night thy confidant for once,)  
  The first and last confession of the globe,  
  Outsurging, muttering from thy soul’s abysms,  
  The tale of cosmic elemental passion,  
  Thou tellest to a kindred soul.  
”

thou art above the rest

“  
  The noble sire fallen on evil days,  
  I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, brandishing,  
  (Memories of old in abeyance, love and faith in abeyance,)  
  The insane knife toward the Mother of All.  
”

the Mother of All

“  
  But now the chorus I hear and am elated,  
  A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of  
      daybreak I hear,  
  A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,  
  A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,  
  The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and  
      violins, all these I fill myself with,  
  I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite  
      meanings,  
  I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving,  
      contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;  
  I do not think the performers know themselves--but now I think  
      begin to know them.  
What Ship Puzzled at Sea  
  What ship puzzled at sea, cons for the true reckoning?  
  Or coming in, to avoid the bars and follow the channel a perfect  
      pilot needs?  
  Here, sailor! here, ship! take aboard the most perfect pilot,  
  Whom, in a little boat, putting off and rowing, I hailing you offer.  
A Noiseless Patient Spider  
  A noiseless patient spider,  
  I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,  
  Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,  
  It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,  
  Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.  
  And you O my soul where you stand,  
  Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,  
  Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to  
      connect them,  
  Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,  
  Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.  
O Living Always, Always Dying  
”

Ceaselessly musing

“  
  Of these States the poet is the equable man,  
  Not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of  
      their full returns,  
  Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad,  
  He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither  
      more nor less,  
  He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,  
  He is the equalizer of his age and land,  
  He supplies what wants supplying, he checks what wants checking,  
  In peace out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich,  
      thrifty, building populous towns, encouraging agriculture, arts,  
      commerce, lighting the study of man, the soul, health,  
      immortality, government,  
  In war he is the best backer of the war, he fetches artillery as  
      good as the engineer’s, he can make every word he speaks draw blood,  
  The years straying toward infidelity he withholds by his steady faith,  
  He is no arguer, he is judgment, (Nature accepts him absolutely,)  
  He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun failing round  
      helpless thing,  
  As he sees the farthest he has the most faith,  
  His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things,  
  In the dispute on God and eternity he is silent,  
  He sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement,  
  He sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women  
      as dreams or dots.  
”