perforating village huts with barbed shrapnel, trenchpits filled with fuel-gas-poison’d explosive powders—
Under the world there’s broken skulls, crushed feet, cut eyeballs, severed fingers, slashed jaws,
Dysentery; homeless millions, tortured hearts, empty souls.
April 1973
Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit
Annotations to Amitendranath Tagore’s Sung Poetry
“In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad.”
Reading Sung poems, I think of my poems to Neal
dead few years now, Jack underground
invisible—their faces rise in my mind.
Did I write truthfully of them? In later times
I saw them little, not much difference they’re dead.
They live in books and memory, strong as on earth.
“I do not know who is hoarding all this rare work.”
Old One the dog stretches stiff legged,
soon he’ll be underground. Spring’s first fat bee
buzzes yellow over the new grass and dead leaves.
What’s this little brown insect walking zigzag
across the sunny white page of Su Tung-p’o’s poem?
Fly away, tiny mite, even your life is tender—
I lift the book and blow you into the dazzling void.
“I fear that others may know I am here;
An immortal may appear to welcome me.”
Right leg broken, can’t walk around
visit the fishpond to touch the cold water,
tramp thru willows to the lonely meadow across the brook—
here comes a metal landrover, brakes creaking hello.
“You live apart on rivers and seas …”
You live in apartments by rivers and seas
Spring comes, waters flow murky, the salt wave’s covered with oily dung
Sun rises, smokestacks cover the roofs with black mist
winds blow, city skies are clear blue all afternoon
but at night the full moon hesitates behind brick.
How will all these millions of people worship the Great Mother?
When all these millions of people die, will they recognize the Great Father?
“I always remember the year I made it over the mountain pass.”
Robins and sparrows warble in mild spring dusk
sun sets behind green pines in the little valley
High over my roof gray branches sway gently under motionless clouds
Hunters guns sounded three times in the hillside aspen
The house sat silent as I looked above my book,
quiet old poems about the Yi & Tsangpo Rivers—
I always remember the spring I climbed Glacier Peak with Gary.
Cherry Valley, April 20, 1973
Night Gleam
Over and over thru the dull material world the call is made
over and over thru the dull material world I make the call
O English folk, in Sussex night, thru black beech tree branches
the full moon shone at three AM, I stood in under wear on the lawn—
I saw a mustached English man I loved, with athlete’s breast and farmer’s arms,
I lay in bed that night many loves beating in my heart
sleepless hearing songs of generations electric returning intelligent memory
to my frame, and so went to dwell again in my heart
and worship the Lovers there, love’s teachers, youths and poets who live forever
in the secret heart, in the dark night, in the full moon, year after year
over & over thru the dull material world the call is made.
July 16, 1973
What I’d Like to Do
Retire abandon world sd Swami Bhaktivedanta my age 47 approaching half-century
Go to San Marino see Blake’s vision of Moloch, go to Manchester see Moloch
Visit Blake’s works all over World West, study prophetic Books interpret Blake unify Vision
Step in same river twice
Build hermitage of wood and stone with porch 3000 foot up Rockies, Sierras, Catskills fine soft forests
sit crosslegged straight spine belly relaxed heart humming Ah each exhalation
Inspiration established compose English Apocalypse American science Greek rhythm Tibetan mantra Blues
long hours half-lotus-legged at desk window pine trees omming in rainy wind
Spend three years in solitude Naropa’s Six Doctrines mastered and another hundred days intermediate State twixt Death and Birth
Read Milton’s Paradise Lost decipher Egyptian Book of Dead and Annutara Tantra etc.
Compose poems to the wind
Chant into electric microphones, pacify Rock, enrich
skull emptiness with vocal salami taxicabs, magnetize nervous systems,
destroy Empire State’s dead Life Time smog
Masturbate in peace, haunt ancient cities for boys, practice years of chastity, save Jewels for God my own ruddy body, hairy delicate antennae
Vegetable, eat carrots, fork cabbage, spoon peas, fry potatoes, boil beets, ox forgiven, pig forgotten, hot dogs banished from celestial realms cloud-roofed over Kitkitdizze’s green spring weeds—milk, angel-Milk
Read Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov I laid down half-finished a dozen times decades ago
Compose last choirs of Innocence & Experience, set music to tongues of Rossetti Mss. orchestrate Jerusalem’s quatrains—
War’s over, soft mat wood floor, flower vase on inkstand, blue oaks gazing in the window.
London, August 1973
On Illness
Lord Heart, heal my right temple bang’d soft pain the bookshelf
rising to fuck Peter embrac’d naked on big wooden couch mattress sheeted blanketed
My broken leg Lord Heart heal crooked bone above stiff ankle, straight tibia tender sore
Lord Heart, more near, lax abdomen muscle, nausea hiatus hernia
That I never eat too much Lord Heart eat Lord’s parts sick with solar plexus pain,
deep breath your airy body tingling empty pleasur’d skin kissed cock surrender’d rising buttock entering yr Lord Heart—
Entered I surrender to Lord Heart himself disguised Krishna Ke Jai yr blue lingam—Hey Bom Shivaye!
Lord Heart your female poetry bottom, penis female sensitive—
ass kissed & tongued by Jove Jupiter Zeus
Ganymede-ass or Tara ladybelly
Om Saraswati Hrih Sowha
MOM
Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom
Lord Heart my baldness cure thru confident eye my lover’s open pupil
My teeth Lord Heart keep clean as I do brush them twice daily. Keep me from pain.
My hernia rupture paunch healed no pain these coughs—soft muscle stomach-fold sewn insentient muscle skin.
Lord Heart not smoke cigarette butts anymore—
Keep me Lord Heart for yr Works & Destruction
Body meat cries, sighs, sits immobile Ah, pain passed over—
Lord Heart, my aged father’s hand is cool, legs stumbling
defend us from Death Fear, Matter-formed fear faces, disgrac’d mere Flesh
Gone known Lord Heart ourselves defend from Foul Fiend
Grant peace this body Lord Heart, this Soul, this Spirit hand & tongue—
this Great Presence defend Lord Heart your silent Inviolable Witness—
Lord Heart the Great Planet defend this Space Mirror of our Vast Emptiness
Lord Heart come fill my Soul with Mountain snow & Glacier-melt slow Aeon’s Gnosis—
ancient voice Lord Heart, your thousand arms & eight, of preservation & compassion
Conch Shell, Lotus, Diamond Sceptre, Book of Memory, Umbrella, Fish & Mirror & Machine Wheel
Eternal One Lord Heart accept my soul and body as your own
Free play of causeless bliss.
London, August 29, 1973
News Bu
lletin
“Criminal possession of a controlled substance—
Marijuana” came over the radio
I got mad & sent Gov. Rockefeller a
crystal skull postcard
Abbie Hoffman just got busted
million pounds of Cocaine
I wrote the wrong essay & combed burrs
out of a Godly dog’s hide
A lady asked text on Jewish Holocaust
I filed her letter and made sugar borscht
Tim Leary silent Folsom Jail’d I jacked
off with a plastic cock in my ass
Catastrophe everywhere today propane
shortage prophesied I answered my mail
I stuck my head out the edge of
Universe wheels in starry wheels
while Supreme Court struck down pornography
for the umpteenth time
It’ll begin all over dope raids
sex flick police assassinations
mass Television in Vietnam
Mugging on streets your favorite
policeman peddling junk
your favorite President falling falling falling
endlessly the dream cliff
receding into Heaven Vice
President falling falling
stars flying by the earth
oceans awash with blue
galaxies spinning past I washed
my big toe
I exercised my painful ankle smoked
a joint I came I wrote letters
scratched my head
Populations flee the flood, crowds
move downstreet in teargas clouds,
camel riders footweary skeletons
walk away from drought
desert burning, sea screaming,
Bacteria frothing mouth preserve
jars
I made toast I fried mushrooms I ate
raw corn
Armies moved on Phnom Penh I
watched a new born butterfly
flutter orange-winged in circles
round me on the grass
Nixon met Agnew papers said Resign
I resigned I sat and stared at
a flat gray cloud over the roof—
Three boys in jail on trial in
Brussels for translating Anarchist’s
Cookbook I held the cloth
thru which Peter poured boiling beet
juice into an Aluminum pot.
Cherry Valley, September 1, 1973
On Neruda’s Death
Some breath breathes out Adonais & Canto General
Some breath breathes out Bombs and dog barks
Some breath breathes silent over green snow mountains
Some breath breathes not at all
Teton Village, September 25, 1973
Mind Breaths
Thus crosslegged on round pillow sat in Teton Space—
I breathed upon the aluminum microphone-stand a body’s length away
I breathed upon the teacher’s throne, the wooden chair with yellow pillow
I breathed further, past the sake cup half emptied by the breathing guru
Breathed upon the green sprigged thick-leaved plant in a flowerpot
Breathed upon the vast plateglass shining back th’ assembled sitting Sangha in the meditation cafeteria
my breath thru nostril floated out to the moth of evening beating into window’d illumination
breathed outward over aspen twigs trembling September’s top yellow leaves twilit at mountain foot
breathed over the mountain, over snowpowdered crags ringed under slow-breathed cloud-mass white spumes
windy across Tetons to Idaho, gray ranges under blue space swept
with delicate snow flurries, breaths Westward
mountain grass trembling in tiny winds toward Wasatch
Breezes south late autumn in Salt Lake’s wooden temple streets,
white salt dust lifted swirling by the thick leaden lake, dust carried up over Kennecott’s pit onto the massive Unit Rig,
out towards Reno’s neon, dollar bills skittering downstreet along the curb,
up into Sierras oak leaves blown down by fall cold chills
over peaktops snowy gales beginning,
a breath of prayer down on Kitkitdizze’s horngreen leaves close to ground,
over Gary’s tile roof, over temple pillar, tents and manzanita arbors in Sierra pine foothills—
a breath falls over Sacramento Valley, roar of wind down the sixlane freeway across Bay Bridge
uproar of papers floating over Montgomery Street, pigeons flutter down before sunset from Washington Park’s white churchsteeple—
Golden Gate waters whitecapped scudding out to Pacific spreads
over Hawaii a balmy wind thru Hotel palmtrees, a moist warmth swept over the airbase, a dank breeze in Guam’s rotten Customs shed,
clear winds breathe on Fiji’s palm & coral shores, by wooden hotels in Suva town flags flutter, taxis whoosh by Friday night’s black promenaders under the rock & roll discotheque window upstairs beating with English neon—
on a breeze into Sydney, and across hillside grass where mushrooms lie low on Cow-Flops in Queensland, down Adelaide’s alleys a flutter of music from Brian Moore’s Dobro carried in the wind—
up thru Darwin Land, out Gove Peninsula green ocean breeze, clack of Yerkalla village song sticks by the trembling wave
Yea and a wind over mercurial waters of Japan North East, a hollow wooden gong echoes in Kyoto’s temple hall below the graveyard’s wavy grass
A foghorn blowing in the China Sea, torrential rains over Saigon, bombers float over Cambodia, visioned tiny from stone Avelokitesvera’s many-faced towers Angkor Wat in windy night,
a puff of opium out of a mouth yellowed in Bangkok, a puff of hashish flowing thick out of a bearded saddhu’s nostrils & eyes in Nimtallah Burning Ghat,
wood smoke flowing in wind across Hooghly Bridge, incense wafted under the Bo Tree in Bodh Gaya, in Benares woodpiles burn at Manikarnika returning incensed souls to Shiva,
wind dallies in the amorous leaves of Brindaban, still air on the vast mosque floor above Old Delhi’s alleyways,
wind blowing over Kausani town’s stone wall, Himalayan peaktops ranged hundreds of miles along snowy horizon, prayer flags flutter over Almora’s wood brown housetops,
trade winds carry dhows thru Indian Ocean to Mombasa or down to Dar ’Salaam’s riverside sail port, palms sway & sailors wrapped in cotton sleep on log decks—
Soft breezes up thru Red Sea to Eliat’s dry hotels, paper leaflets scatter by the Wailing Wall, drifting into the Sepulchre
Mediterranean zephyrs leaving Tel Aviv, over Crete, Lassithi Plains’ windmills still turn the centuries near Zeus’ birth cave
Piraeus wave-lashed, Venice lagoon’s waters blown up over the floor of San Marco, Piazza flooded and mud on the marble porch, gondolas bobbing up & down choppy waters at the Zattere,
chill September fluttering thru Milan’s Arcade, cold bones & overcoats flapping in St. Peter’s Square,
down Appian Way silence by gravesites, stelae stolid on a lonely grass path, the breath of an old man laboring up road—
Across Scylla & Charybdis, Sicilian tobacco smoke wafted across the boat deck,
into Marseilles coalstacks black fumes float into clouds, steamer’s white driftspume down wind all the way to Tangier,
a breath of red-tinged Autumn in Provence, boats slow on the Seine, the lady wraps her cloak tight round her bodice on toppa Eiffel Tower’s iron head—
across the Channel rough black-green waves, in London’s Piccadilly beercans roll on concrete neath Eros’ silver breast, the Sunday Times lifts and settles on wet fountain steps—
over Iona Isle blue day and balmy Inner Hebrides breeze, fog drifts across Atlantic,
Labrador white frozen blowing cold, down New York’s canyons manila paper bags scurry toward Wall from Lower East side—
a breath over my F
ather’s head in his apartment on Park Avenue Paterson,
a cold September breeze down from East Hill, Cherry Valley’s maples tremble red,
out thru Chicago Windy City the vast breath of Consciousness dissolves, smokestacks and autos drift expensive fumes ribboned across railroad tracks,
Westward, a single breath blows across the plains, Nebraska’s fields harvested & stubble bending delicate in evening airs
up Rockies, from Denver’s Cherry Creekbed another zephyr risen,
across Pike’s Peak an icy blast at sunset, Wind River peaktops flowing toward the Tetons,
a breath returns vast gliding grass flats cow-dotted into Jackson Hole, into a corner of the plains,
up the asphalt road and mud parking lot, a breeze of restless September, up wood stairways in the wind
into the cafeteria at Teton Village under the red tram lift
a calm breath, a silent breath, a slow breath breathes outward from the nostrils.
September 28, 1973
Flying Elegy
Denver tower blocks group’d under gray haze
on tracted plains gassed to azure horizon—“no place to take revenge.”
Alan Watts epicure drank much
sang bass Christo voice a long long long breathed Aum passed on
in sleep exhausted heart philosopher
wandering age 58 in Chinese dressing gown to seek love, or enter Buddha blind
like this blue sky wing plunged thru rainbow halo in clouds’ drifty whiteness
The skandas are a veil suchlike, no place to take revenge
Blessed the dead who can’t fight back resent a poem knife thought
Blessed the dead in ignorance, dead with no sores or cigarette yen
Blessed the dead that don’t get laid, don’t eat fine casseroles herb-spiced with crusty cheese
don’t drink slow tea
don’t waste petrol surveying clouds in Heaven
don’t waste words at their condition, no one to talk to
Bless the free dead lecturing in the deep with moveless tongue
perfect meditators without thought, accomplished in Sunyata
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 48
