I Sit and Look Out:

What a lesser-known poem by Walt Whitman can teach us about silence and complicity during dark times

The year is 1860. A forty-one-year-old writer sits and looks out at all the sorrows of the world from his Brooklyn apartment. He sees his city devastated by an epidemic. He sees his country in deep political turmoil, on the brink of a civil war. He observes a host of arrogant leaders who fail to adequately grasp the political and social realities of the times and who stoke division between feuding factions of an extremely polarized country. Along with the rest of the nation, the writer hears the cries for justice from enslaved African-Americans in the South, and from the recently freed, though economically impoverished, African-Americans in the North. He hears, too, the cries from abused and battered women; he hears their demands for equal rights, including the right to a political voice. He observes the struggles of new immigrants arriving on the shores of the Atlantic in search of opportunities and a chance at the American Dream. He sees the poor living conditions in slum neighborhoods and the high rates of homelessness and unemployment in his city. He observes, in an achingly personal way, the shame, fear, and loneliness suffered by a certain subculture of men––men like him––who long to express their feelings of love and attraction toward other men, which, as of that time, had yet to find a name or language to describe––much less an identity or an open, embracing community to call on.

That writer is Walt Whitman. And it is against this backdrop of dark times that Whitman picks up his pencil and scribbles down draft lines for what would become a short poem entitled “I Sit and Look Out”:

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world,
and upon all oppression and shame,

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at
anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds
done;

I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children,
dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate,

I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the
treacherous seducer of the young woman,

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love,
attempted to be hid—I see these sights on the
earth,

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I
see martyrs and prisoners,

I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors
casting lots who shall be killed, to preserve the
lives of the rest,

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arro-
gant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon
negroes, and the like;

All these—All the meanness and agony without end,
I sitting, look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent.

_______

The year is 2000. A pre-law college student sits and looks out at all the sorrows of the world from his dorm room in Upper Manhattan. He, too, sees a world suffering through dark times, devastated by social ills and injustices. He sees a bitterly divided America. He sees protests and civil unrest in the aftermath of brutal attacks on unarmed African-Americans by law enforcement. He observes the failings of a broken justice system that heavily favors the privileged and is skewed against women, the poor, and against immigrant families like his who emigrated from Thailand to Los Angeles in the early 1980s in pursuit of the American Dream. He sees the rise of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, reflected in, not least, the passage of laws restricting non-citizens from access to public benefits. He marks the growing death toll caused by a virus without a known cure, attached to equally-deadly stigma. And on the horizon, he sees a pair of majestic twin towers about to collapse around him, toppling his perception of the world he had come to know.

It is against this backdrop that the college student picks up a copy of Leaves of Grass, one of the assigned readings for a Literature Humanities seminar course. He flips through its pages, and comes upon a ten-line free verse poem that catches his attention. It begins: “I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame.” These words, and their evocation of a dark world, resonate with him, and he continues reading. As he pores over the difficult scenes catalogued in the mid-nineteenth-century poem, he cannot help but draw parallels to the difficult scenes he sees in his own world at the start of a new millennium. And then, he comes to the poem’s last line: “See, hear, and am silent.” He pauses and reads it several more times. “See, hear, and am silent.” At that moment, a strange, inexplicable kinship develops between him and the poem’s narrator, and likewise, between him and Whitman. He wonders if he, too, has been silent.

The year is 2006. The college student is now a young attorney, sitting at an office desk and looking out at the world from his law firm’s offices in Hong Kong’s Central District. He feels a sense of loneliness and isolation, not only from being in a foreign land but also from the fact that he has carried a dark secret. Meanwhile, he observes the silence of other men and women, similarly struggling to hide and suppress a part of themselves. From a distance, he hears “secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done”; he hears his own secret convulsive sobs. He hears slurs and verbal attacks; he sees “slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons.” In the air is a complicit silence by a society unwilling to call out the “oppression and shame.” And he observes the law’s culpable silence in failing to provide any meaningful legal protections or remedies. He sees and hears all this, and remains silent. 

_______

The year is 1862. The writer sits and looks out at the horrors and agonies of war. He wakes up to a blood-drenched country, torn apart by bitter division. He hears news that his younger brother, a Union Army soldier, has been wounded in the battlefield. The writer begins to question his own past silence and inaction in the midst of a world plagued by the “workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny.” He concludes he can no longer remain a passive, silent bystander, and with this new resolve, he rushes to Washington D.C. to volunteer as a nurse to sick and wounded soldiers who are “dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate.” He offers these soldiers companionship, conversation, and friendship. Leveraging on his writing skills, he serves as their amanuensis, composing letters on their behalf to send home to their loved ones. He hears in their harrowing stories his brother’s story; he sees in the faces of these battle-worn soldiers his own face. In silence, he writes.

The year is 1892. The writer is now on his death bed. He reflects on his long and prolific writing career. He prepares his final edition of Leaves of Grass for publication. He sends off what will be the final set of letters to his family and friends, and to past lovers in secret. A decade prior, he published a prose memoir, Specimen Days, which introduces the formative experiences that have shaped him and the ever-changing world around him. In the memoir, he writes generously and openly about everything––everything except for the secret he has been carrying for practically his entire life: his intimate relationships with male lovers, and all those “ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid.” He would have recalled his cluster of poems entitled “Calamus” that was first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass (the same edition in which “I Sit and Look Out” first appeared), in which he expresses his most intimate thoughts on the love and attraction he feels for other men. In one of these poems, he laments of the “hours of…torment,” wondering “if other men ever have the like, out of the like feelings.” In that poem, he comes the closest to sharing his truth with the world, proclaiming: “I am ashamed––but it is useless––I am what I am.” Nonetheless, shortly before his death, when he was asked directly about the homosexual themes in the “Calamus” poems in a series of letters exchanged with John Addington Symonds, a fellow poet and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality, he outright dismisses the allegations as “morbid inferences” and, in fact, claims to have fathered six children, an assertion that remains unsubstantiated to this date. Whitman, at seventy-two, looks out at a world that has stifled the expression of his truth, along with the truths of so many others, and in silence, takes his final breath.

_______

The year is 2013. The lawyer begins to grapple with his past and present silences. He sees a world marked by social injustices, particularly against members of the queer community that he once shunned but now identifies with. He sees the denial of basic rights to same-sex couples and an unwillingness by legislatures to pass anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws. He hears the personal stories of law students and young lawyers struggling to come out; he hears in them his own story. As the marriage equality cases make its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, he flies from Hong Kong to Washington D.C. to stand in solidarity with fellow LGBTQ advocates and supporters. Queuing in front of the Supreme Court to attend the oral arguments in the historic United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry cases, he is interviewed by journalists on why he decided to travel across the world to participate in this moment. After years of silence, he musters the courage to speak up: “I’m here because I can no longer remain silent.”

The year is 2020. The attorney has now put his career on hold to return to New York City, and to his alma mater, Columbia University, to pursue creative writing and literature studies. He enrolls in an English seminar on Walt Whitman’s poetry and cultural legacy. To his surprise, the course is taught by the same professor he had for his Literature Humanities seminar two decades prior. As part of a class assignment involving a poetry presentation, the student-turned-attorney-turned-student is given the opportunity to revisit “I Sit and Look Out” through a contemporary lens. Looking out at his fellow classmates on Zoom who are scattered across the country and the world, he relays the story of how he first came across “I Sit and Look Out” as a reserved and apathetic college student; how he has carried the poem half way across the world and back again through his own coming-out journey and his LGBTQ activism; and how his visceral, gut-punching reaction to the poem’s ending spurred him to critically examine his own silences amid the social ills and injustices. He also reflects on the great irony of the poem’s ending: the fact that Whitman was not silent at all, that he was speaking out on political and social issues through this poem and his other writings; that poetry, as with other forms of writing, is an interruption of silence, and can be used as a powerful tool for advocacy and activism; and that Whitman’s centuries-old voice (his “barbaric yawp,” as he famously proclaims in his epic poem, “Song of Myself”) continues to live on through the countless lives that his poetry and other writings have touched and inspired.

_______

A forty-one-year-old writer, now in quarantine during a global pandemic, sits and looks out at all the sorrows of the world from his apartment in New York City. He sees a seemingly endless catalogue of sufferings that echo the past. He sees a world ravaged by a virus, without a known cure and associated with a dangerous stigma, created by anger and fear, directed toward another historically-disadvantaged minority group. He marks the pandemic’s disproportionate infection and death toll on non-privileged segments of the community. He sees the horrors of brutal beatings and murders of African-Americans by law enforcement. He sees a country in need of healing, unification, and effective leadership. He sees his friends back in Hong Kong being forcefully silenced in their demands for full democracy and an inquiry into police actions. He observes a world observing a moment of collective silence.

And yet, as the world slowly reopens, he sees promising signs of both individual and collective reckonings with its dark past. He hears the powerful chants and the impassioned calls for change from diverse political and social movements, including Black Lives Matter, Me Too, queer and transgender rights, police reform, and pro-democracy movements. He observes a country inching forward closer than ever to real transformation. He sees more people beginning to grapple with and question their own past silences and register the complicity enabled by their silences. He hears more voices speaking up on behalf of members of their own communities and for other communities in solidarity and allyship. He sees more people from all walks of life coming together to tackle the social ills and injustices––“all the meanness and agony without end”––that have plagued this country and the world, in one form or another, for centuries.

A writer––this writer––now hears the poem that he has carried across the world, during his twenties, thirties, and now forties, call out to him louder than ever. He hears the sage, prescient voice of one of the greatest ever poet-writers. Listen to the silence, the voice says. This writer, sitting and looking out upon all the sorrows of the world, pauses to reflect on what he sees and hears. He is silent. Then, he begins to write.

Wally Suphap is a queer Thai-American writer, lawyer, journalist, and activist. Profiled in the Financial Times and Yahoo! Finance as a Top 50 OUTstanding LGBT+ Future Leader in 2018 and 2019, his writings and interviews have appeared in the Hong Kong Lawyer, Asian Legal Business, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Los Angeles Times, CBS Los Angeles, Washington Blade, LGBTQ Nation, and other outlets. Wally holds a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Columbia University. Born in Bangkok and raised in Los Angeles, Wally worked for 10+ years in Hong Kong in the legal and finance industry. He resides in New York City.