Thanks to Flickr contributor easement for submitting this photo of a quote from Walt Whitman that’s currently being carved into the north entrance to the Dupont metro stop at 20th & Q streets NW. So far it reads “Thus in silence in dreams’ projection,” which is from the last stanza of Whitman’s poem “The Wound Dresser.” When it’s finished, the enscription on the wall will read:

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 dark night – some are so young;

Some suffer so much – I recall the experience sweet and sad…

Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1876

The selection actually cuts off the last two lines of the poem, which read, in a parenthetical: “(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)” We want to believe the omission was related to space and not because city leaders thought it was too gay.