Collected Poems 1947-1997

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Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 72

by Allen Ginsberg


  Nature boy drifts into Central American oblivion

  with Seminole Patchwork and Albert Einstein,

  nobody thought heat rays would end the world.

  September 25, 1983

  They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining

  I needed a young musician take off his pants sit down on the bed and sing me the blues

  I needed a teacher could nail me to the Unborn

  needed a stepmother’d accomplish my natural mother’s tears

  a scared friend of fame wearing locks and T’fillin by the Wall of Tears

  I needed a brother was gentle, suffered to protect me from anger

  needed a nephew lost, left his rice in the refrigerator with a cold spoon

  Comrade farmer cook with me & study Banjo Dharma

  Needed Presidents mad so I could write the Nation sane

  I needed a father a poet would die

  Needed the great companion dark eyes wearied brow tender heart in the grave

  needed an intelligent junkie rebuke my shallow thought with dirty wit

  an old girlfriend take my picture, give me a bed—

  A college to be kicked out Columbia

  scandal jail the clang of Iron madhouse to wake my 22’d year

  Invented all these companions, wept & prayed them into flesh

  needed these Creatures to be Allen Ginsberg this my self

  crying the world awake mid oceans of suffering blood

  needed to be the liar of Existence in America

  Manslaughter showed me the True Falsehood of Law

  Needed a Buddha enlightened I be enlightened

  a bed to sleep in, a grave to cover my ashes.

  October 1, 1983

  White Shroud

  I am summoned from my bed

  To the Great City of the Dead

  Where I have no house or home

  But in dreams may sometime roam

  Looking for my ancient room

  A feeling in my heart of doom,

  Where Grandmother aged lies

  In her couch of later days

  And my mother saner than I

  Laughs and cries She’s still alive.

  I found myself again in the Great Eastern Metropolis,

  wandering under Elevated Transport’s iron struts—

  many-windowed apartments walled the crowded Bronx road-way

  under old theater roofs, masses of poor women shopping

  in black shawls past candy store news stands, children skipped beside

  grandfathers bent tottering on their canes. I’d descended

  to this same street from blackened subways Sundays long ago,

  tea and lox with my aunt and dentist cousin when I was ten.

  The living pacifist David Dellinger walked at my right side,

  he’d driven from Vermont to visit Catholic Worker

  Tivoli Farm, we rode up North Manhattan in his car,

  relieved the U.S. wars were over in the newspaper,

  Television’s frenzied dance of dots & shadows calmed—Now

  older than our shouts and banners, we explored brick avenues

  we lived in to find new residences, rent loft offices

  or roomy apartments, retire our eyes & ears & thoughts.

  Surprised, I passed the open Chamber where my Russian Jewish

  Grandmother lay in her bed and sighed eating a little Chicken

  soup or borscht, potato latkes, crumbs on her blankets, talking

  Yiddish, complaining solitude abandoned in Old Folks House.

  I realized I could find a place to sleep in the neighborhood, what

  relief, the family together again, first time in decades!—

  Now vigorous Middle aged I climbed hillside streets in West Bronx

  looking for my own hot-water furnished flat to settle in,

  close to visit my grandmother, read Sunday newspapers

  in vast glassy Cafeterias, smoke over pencils & paper,

  poetry desk, happy with books father’d left in the attic,

  peaceful encyclopedia and a radio in the kitchen.

  An old black janitor swept the gutter, street dogs sniffed red hydrants,

  nurses pushed baby carriages past silent house fronts.

  Anxious I be settled with money in my own place before

  nightfall, I wandered tenement embankments overlooking

  the pillared subway trestles by the bridge crossing Bronx River.

  How like Paris or Budapest suburbs, far from Centrum

  Left Bank junky doorstep tragedy intellectual fights

  in restaurant bars, where a spry old lady carried her

  Century Universal View camera to record Works

  Progress Administration newspaper metropolis

  double-decker buses in September sun near Broadway El,

  skyscraper roofs upreared ten thousand office windows shining

  electric-lit above tiny taxis street lamp’d in Mid-town

  avenues’ late-afternoon darkness the day before Christmas,

  Herald Square crowds thronged past traffic lights July noon to lunch

  Shop under Macy’s department store awnings for dry goods

  pause with satchels at Frankfurter counters wearing stylish straw

  hats of the decade, mankind thriving in their solitudes in shoes.

  But I’d strayed too long amused in the picture cavalcade,

  Where was I living? I remembered looking for a house

  & eating in apartment kitchens, bookshelf decades ago, Aunt

  Rose’s illness, an appendix operation, teeth braces,

  one afternoon fitting eyeglasses first time, combing wet hair

  back on my skull, young awkward looking in the high school mirror

  photograph. The Dead look for a home, but here I was still alive.

  I walked past a niche between buildings with tin canopy

  shelter from cold rain warmed by hot exhaust from subway gratings,

  beneath which engines throbbed with pleasant quiet drone.

  A shopping-bag lady lived in the side alley on a mattress,

  her wooden bed above the pavement, many blankets and sheets,

  Pots, pans, and plates beside her, fan, electric stove by the wall.

  She looked desolate, white haired, but strong enough to cook and stare.

  Passersby ignored her buildingside hovel many years,

  a few businessmen stopped to speak, or give her bread or yogurt.

  Sometimes she disappeared into state hospital back wards,

  but now’d returned to her homely alleyway, sharp eyed, old

  Cranky hair, half paralyzed, complaining angry as I passed.

  I was horrified a little, who’d take care of such a woman,

  familiar, half-neglected on her street except she’d weathered

  many snows stubborn alone in her motheaten rabbit-fur hat.

  She had tooth troubles, teeth too old, ground down like horse molars—

  she opened her mouth to display her gorge—how can she live

  with that, how eat I thought, mushroom-like gray-white horseshoe of

  incisors she chomped with, hard flat flowers ranged around her gums.

  Then I recognized she was my mother, Naomi, habiting

  this old city-edge corner, older than I knew her before

  her life diappeared. What are you doing here? I asked, amazed

  she recognized me still, astounded to see her sitting up

  on her own, chin raised to greet me mocking “I’m living alone,

  you all abandoned me, I’m a great woman, I came here

  by myself, I wanted to live, now I’m too old to take care

  of myself, I don’t care, what are you doing here?” I

  was looking for a house, I thought, she has one, in poor

  Bronx, needs someone to help her shop and cook, needs her children now,

  I’m her younger son, walked past her alleyway by accident,

&
nbsp; but here she is survived, sleeping at night awake on that

  wooden platform. Has she an extra room? I noticed her cave

  adjoined an apartment door, unpainted basement storeroom

  facing her shelter in the building side. I could live here,

  worst comes to worst, best place I’ll find, near my mother in

  our mortal life. My years of haunting continental city streets,

  apartment dreams, old rooms I used to live in, still paid rent for,

  key didn’t work, locks changed, immigrant families occupied

  my familiar hallway lodgings—I’d wandered downhill homeless

  avenues, money lost, or’d come back to the flat—But couldn’t

  recognize my house in London, Paris, Bronx, by Columbia

  library, downtown 8th Avenue near Chelsea Subway—

  Those years unsettled—were over now, here I could live

  forever, here have a home, with Naomi, at long last,

  at long long last, my search was ended in this pleasant way,

  time to care for her before death, long way to go yet,

  lots of trouble her cantankerous habits, shameful blankets

  near the street, tooth pots, dirty pans, half paralyzed irritable,

  she needed my middle aged strength and worldly money knowledge,

  housekeeping art. I can cook and write books for a living,

  she’ll not have to beg her medicine food, a new set of teeth

  for company, won’t yell at the world, I can afford a telephone,

  after twenty-five years we could call up Aunt Edie in California,

  I’ll have a place to stay. “Best of all,” I told Naomi

  “Now don’t get mad, you realize your old enemy Grandma’s

  still alive! She lives a couple blocks down hill, I just saw her,

  like you!” My breast rejoiced, all my troubles over, she was

  content, too old to care or yell her grudge, only complaining

  her bad teeth. What long-sought peace!

  Then glad of life I woke

  in Boulder before dawn, my second story bedroom windows

  Bluff Street facing East over town rooftops, I returned

  from the Land of the Dead to living Poesy, and wrote

  this tale of long lost joy, to have seen my mother again!

  And when the ink ran out of my pen, and rosy violet

  illumined city treetop skies above the Flatiron Front Range,

  I went downstairs to the shady living room, where Peter Orlovsky

  sat with long hair lit by television glow to watch

  the sunrise weather news, I kissed him & filled my pen and wept.

  October 5, 1983, 6:35 A.M.

  Empire Air

  Flying to Rochester Institute of Technology

  Rising above the used car lots & colored dumps of Long Island

  stubby white smokestreams drift North above th’ Egyptic Factory roof’d monolith

  into gray clouds, Conquer the world!

  World Health restored with organic orange juice & Tibetan mule-dung-smelling Pills—Conquer the World Conquer the World

  Conquer the World of Ego, Conquer World Anger

  Conquer brick Worlds, Mortal Factories!

  Conquer the Dewdrop? Conquer white clouded Sky we pass through?—

  O ever-rising intelligent Sun conquer the night of Mind

  Conquer War O Technologic Warrior

  1 ride above the Sun

  I look down into the Sun

  I’m equal to Sun, Sun & I on the level

  I’ve no appendicitis, I hang a Brooks Brothers tie

  My clothes are Salvation Army! Conquer America! Conquer Greed! Conquer warmonger Hands!

  Conquer yourself! Conquer your gluttony Ginsberg! Conquer lust for Conquest!

  Conquer Conquest at last! All right Jack Number One! Creon wrecks Imperial City!

  Conquer by Calm! Conquer by not getting laid, growing younger & older same time!

  Conquer by having a hard on! Conquer all space by giving it away! Conquer the Universe by inhabiting it!

  Conquer by Dying! By eating decently! Wash yr behind after you move your bowels!

  Pronounce your mother American language marvelously, mouth every syllable, savor every vowel, appreciate each consonant!

  above the clouds! Conquer Karma, the chain of Cause and Effect

  Conquer Cause & Effect, see it work the Cold War!

  See it work in your heart!

  Insult your girlfriend you’ll feel hurt!

  Insult Nicaragua you feel lousy

  Insult the President you insult yourself

  Conquer the President by not insulting him!

  Don’t insult yourself! stop insulting the Russians! stop insulting the enemy!

  It costs $220800000000 a year to insult the enemy!

  Conquer Underdeveloped Nation Hunger Debt! Conquer World Grief Bank default! Go Conquer mortal Nuclear Waste!

  Then go back Conquer your own heart!

  January 30, 1984

  Surprise Mind

  How lucky we are to have windows!

  Glass is transparent!

  I saw that boy in red bathingsuit

  walk down the street.

  July 7, 1984, 8:30 A.M.

  Student Love

  The boy’s fresh faced, 18, big smile

  underwear hangs below his shorts, he’s a kid

  still growing

  legs strong, he hugs me, steps away—

  In twenty years thick bellied,

  bright eyes dulled with office work,

  his children’ll pout in the

  bathroom—

  Better get in bed with him on top of me now

  laughing at my pot belly

  before decades pass, bring our bony skulls whispering

  to the hospital bedside.

  July 31, 1984

  The Question

  When that dress-gray, gray haired and gray-faced

  goblin took charge of me then inside the gate,

  which closed behind me for a couple years,

  I was still cheerful exceedingly

  cheerful nodding out (hadn’t slept for days),

  cheerful because taking part in real life

  action again, two serious gentlemen

  at my shoulders in a night-colored car which

  special for me rolled across December’s bridge,

  cheerful because I’d yelled out in the street

  that this one and that one should be notified,

  cheerful because I thought the adventure

  a minor excursion, but cheerful also,

  because such a gray such a small Uncle

  I’d never seen yet, he however

  wasn’t cheerful, was reassuringly

  bored bananas, boringly signed for

  my delivery and boringly

  turned my seven pockets inside out,

  then with a wooden face confiscated

  handkerchief, pocketknife, bunch of keys,

  next indifferently requested my belt

  and examined personally whether

  my underpants operated with string,

  yawned apathetic patting me down,

  last nearly napping asked for the laces

  that wagged lighthearted from my shoetops—

  “I can’t walk like this”—he shrugged a shoulder.

  Left hand holding my pants up, spellbound by

  this unprecedented situation, yet

  still cavalier I bowed deep presenting

  him with the shoelaces in my right hand.

  “What’s the point anyhow? I really don’t

  intend to hang myself”—I assured him

  lighthearted. “You don’t?” he questioned. … “Why not?”

  On his sallow face neither mockery nor hate.

  That was when the fear caught up with me.

  István Eörsi

  Translated with author by A. G. Septemb
er 5, 1984

  In My Kitchen in New York

  for Bataan Faigao

  Bend knees, shift weight—

  Picasso’s blue deathhead self portrait

  tacked on refrigerator door—

  This is the only space in the apartment

  big enough to do T’ai chi—

  Straighten right foot & rise—I wonder

  if I should have set aside that garbage

  pail—

  Raise up my hands & bring them back to

  shoulders—The towels and pajama

  laundry’s hanging on a rope in the hall—

  Push down & grasp the sparrow’s tail—

  Those paper boxes of grocery bags are

  blocking the closed door—

  Turn north—I should hang up all

  those pots on the stovetop—

  Am I holding the world right?—That

  Hopi picture on the wall shows

  rain & lightning bolt—

  Turn right again—thru the door, God

  my office space, a mess of

  pictures & unanswered letters—

  Left on my hips—Thank God Arthur Rimbaud’s

  watching me from over the sink—

  Single whip—piano’s in the room, well

  Steven & Maria finally’ll move to their

  own apartment next week! His pants’re

  still here & Julius in his bed—

  This gesture’s the opposite of St. Francis

  in Ecstasy by Bellini—hands

  down for me—

  I better concentrate on what I’m doing—

  weight in belly, move from hips—

  No, that was the single whip—that apron’s

  hanging on the North wall a year

  I haven’t used it once

  Except to wipe my hands—the Crane

  spreads its wings—have I paid

  the electric bill?

  Playing the guitar—do I have enough $

  to leave the rent paid while I’m

  in China?

  Brush knee—that was good

  halvah, pounded sesame seed,

  in the icebox a week—

  Withdraw & push—I should

  get a loft or giant living room—

  The land speculators bought up all

  the square feet in Manhattan,

  beginning with the Indians—

  Cross hands—I should write

  a letter to the Times saying

  it’s unethical.

  Come to rest hands down knees

  straight—I wonder how

 

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