by Bob Kaufman
The Ancient Rain is falling in the time of a war crisis, people of Europe profess to want peace, as they prepare day and night for war, with the exception of France and England. They are part of the N.A.T.O. alliance. I believe that Russia wants war. Russia supports any Communist nation to war with weapons and political stances on behalf of any Communist political move. This will eventually lead to war—a war that shall make World War Three, the largest war ever.
The Ancient Rain is falling all over America now. The music of the Ancient Rain is heard everywhere. The music is purely American, not European. It is the voice of the American Revolution. It shall play forever. The Ancient Rain is falling in Philadelphia. The bell is tolling. The South cannot hear it. The South hears the Ku Klux Klan, until the bell drowns them out. The Ancient Rain is falling.
The Ancient Rain does what it wants. It does not explain to anyone. The Ancient Rain fell on Hart Crane. He committed suicide in the Gulf of Mexico. Now the Washington Monument is bathed in the celestial lights of the Ancient Rain. The Ancient Rain is falling in America, and all the nations that gather on the East River to try to prevent a star prophecy of 37 million deaths in World War III. They cannot see the Ancient Rain, but live in it, hoping that it does not want war. They would be the victims . . . in Asia, the Orient, Europe, and in South America. The Ancient Rain will cause them to speak the languages they brought with them. The Ancient Rain did not see them in America when Crispus Attucks was falling before the British guns on the Boston Commons. The Ancient Rain is falling again from the place where the Ancient Rain lives. Alone. The Ancient Rain thinks of Crockett and falls on the Santa Ana Freeway and it becomes a smog source.
The Ancient Rain wets my face and I am freed from hatreds of me that disguise themselves with racist bouquets. The Ancient Rain has moved me to another world, where the people stand still and the streets moved me to destination. I look down on the Earth and see myself wandering in the Ancient Rain, ecstatic, aware that the death I feel around me is in the hands of the Ancient Rain and those who plan death for me and dreams are known to the Ancient Rain . . . silent, humming raindrops of the Ancient Rain.
The Ancient Rain is falling. The Washington Monument rumbles.
The Lincoln Memorial is surrounded by stars.
Mount Rushmore stares into every face.
The Continental Congress meets in the home of the Ancient Rain.
Nathan Hale stands immaculate at the entrance to the Capitol.
Crispus Attucks is taken to school by Thomas Jefferson.
Boston is quiet.
The Ancient Rain is falling.
The Ancient Rain is falling everywhere, in Hollywood, only Shirley Temple understands the Ancient Rain and goes to Ghana, Africa, to be ambassador. The Ancient Rain lights up Shirley Temple in the California sky. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, the German U.N. delegation sits comfortably eating in a restaurant that Negro soldiers can’t get into, as of some deal between the Germans and the Ku Klux Klan.
The Ancient Rain is falling on the restaurant. The Southern bloc cannot see it.
The Ancient Rain is falling on the intellectuals of America. It illuminates Lorca, the mystery of America shines in the Poet in New York. The Negroes have gone home with Lorca to the heaven of the lady whose train overflows. Heaven.
The Negroes have gone home to be enclosed by the skirts of their little girl mother. Black angels roam the streets of the earth. Make no mistake, they are angels, each angel is Abraham Lincoln, each angel is guarded by Ulysses S. Grant. They are for the death of the Ku Klux Klan at Appomattox. The sword of Lee is no more.
The Daughters of the Confederacy are having a luncheon at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the Savoy room. They are not Daughters of the American Revolution. They are not the Mothers of Crispus Attucks. They shall have Baked Alaska for dessert. Their lunch is supervised by a Japanese steward, the French caterer has provided them with special gray napkins.
The voice of Robert E. Lee cannot be heard over the rumbles of Grant’s tomb. They leave as they came, the Daughters of the Confederacy, each enclosed in her own Appomattox. Back home they go to Cockalo. Crispus Attucks lying dead on the Boston Commons is the burning of Atlanta by the Union Army. John Brown was God’s Angry Man. Crispus Attucks is the black angel of America. Crispus Attucks died first for the American Revolution, on the opening day of American glory. Crispus Attucks does not want a white mother. Crispus Attucks is the Blackstone of the American Revolution that is known to God. Crispus Attucks is not the son of the South, not the son of Lee, not the son of Jefferson Davis. The South cannot have Attucks for a son. Crispus Attucks is my son, my father, my brother, I am Black.
Crispus Attucks will never fight for Russia. That cannot be said of the Rosenbergs or Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers. Crispus Attucks lives in heaven with Nathan Hale. They go to the same school. They do not live in the South.
I see the death some cannot see, because I am a poet spread-eagled on this bone of the world. A war is coming, in many forms. It shall take place. The South must hear Lincoln at Gettysburg, the South shall be forced to admit that we have endured. The black son of the American Revolution is not the son of the South. Crispus Attucks’ death does not make him the Black son of the South. So be it. Let the voice out of the whirlwind speak:
Federico García Lorca wrote:
Black Man, Black Man, Black Man
For the mole and the water jet
Stay out of the cleft.
Seek out the great sun
Of the center.
The great sun gliding
over dryads.
The sun that undoes
all the numbers,
Yet never
crossed over a
dream.
The great sun gliding over dryads, the sun that undoes all the numbers, yet crossed over a dream. At once I am there at the great sun, feeling the great sun of the center. Hearing the Lorca music in the endless solitude of crackling blueness. I could feel myself a little boy again in crackling blueness, wanting to do what Lorca says in crackling blueness to kiss out my frenzy on bicycle wheels and smash little squares in the flush of a soiled exultation. Federico García Lorca sky, immaculate scoured sky, equaling only itself contained all the distances that Lorca is, that he came from Spain of the Inquisition is no surprise. His poem of solitude walking around Columbia. My first day in crackling blueness, I walked off my ship and rode the subway to Manhattan to visit Grant’s tomb and I thought because Lorca said he would let his hair grow long someday crackling blueness would cause my hair to grow long. I decided to move deeper into crackling blueness. When Franco’s civil guard killed, from that moment on, I would move deeper in crackling blueness. I kept my secrets. I observed those who read him who were not Negroes and listened to all their misinterpretation of him. I thought of those who had been around him, those that were not Negro and were not in crackling blueness, those that couldn’t see his wooden south wind, a tiltin’ black slime that tacked down all the boat wrecks, while Saturn delayed all the trains.
I remember the day I went into crackling blueness. His indescribable voice saying Black Man, Black Man, for the mole and the water jet, stay out of the cleft, seek out the great Sun of the Center.
INDEX OF TITLES AND FIRST LINES
All Hallows, Jack O’Lantern Weather, North of Time, 48
All those ships that never sailed, 55
A PLACE CALLED LONELINESS, 48
Arrival, 34
As usual, 13
At confident moments, thinking on Death, 7
A Tiger in Each Knee, 30
At the illusion world that has come into existence, 75
Awe, 7
Beyond the reach of scorn, lust is freed of its vulgar face, 51
Bitter rose blood from dead grapes, 34
Blood Fell on the Mountains, 50
BLUENESS, THE COLOR OF LOVE, 50
Blues for Hal Waters, 28
Bonsai Poems, 39
Clap Hands, Here Comes
the Lindbergh Baby, 15
Come, Love, 35
Countess Erica Blaise: Chorus, 11
DARKWALKING ENDLESSLY, THESE ANGUISHED FLOORS OF EARTH, 22
DEAR ALEX, TOMORROW I AM GOING TO EAT ALL OF THE SUEZ, 14
Dear People, 5
DEEP ROLLING GALILEE, 49
Demolition, 41
Diverse remarks on what is truly dead, 43
Erica Blaise began life with several established truths, 11
Fragment from Public Secret, 18
FROCK-COATED SHERPA GUIDES DISTRIBUTING (MONOGRAMMED GOLDFISH), 46
From a Painting by El Greco, 67
FROM A PIT OF BONES, 68
I Am a Camera, 73
I AM THE ETERNITY THAT WAS HELD, 67
Inquiry into a December Because, 10
In the beginning, in the wet, 32
I reject those frozen, 15
I remember those days before I knew of my soul’s existence, 39
IT IS SARASWATI AGAIN, 72
It is the time of illusion and reality, 74
I want to ask a terrifying question, 24
January 30, 1976: Message to Myself, 74
Like Father, Like Sun, 35
Lone Eagle, 72
Lorca, 4
MIRO . . . THE FLOWERS ARE UP THERE ON THE WALL, 9
Morning Joy, 38
My head, my secret cranial guitar, strung with myths plucked from, 28
MY MYSTERIES CREATED FOR ME, 57
New? Leftovers, overlooked by hurrying death, 42
Novels from a Fragment in Progress, 20
on the gray shadow of the darkened city, 19
Oregon, 58
Pale morning light, 8
Piano buttons, stitched on morning lights, 38
Picasso’s Balcony, 8
Poems poetically, 47
Private Sadness, 3
Query, 42
Raga of the drum, the drum the drum the drum the drum, the heartbeat, 16
REBELS, WHAT ARE REBELS, 18
RETURN TRIP SEATED ERECT ON THE SINGING TRAIN, 20
Rondeau of the One Sea, 49
Rue Miro, 9
Scene in a Third Eye, 19
Secondless, 21
Secondless, minute scarred, hourless, owless, sourness, 21
Sitting here alone, in peace, 3
Small Memoriam for Myself, 51
Soft noise, where crystalline sap dwells, 31
Spliced Reflections, 43
Split ears of morning earth green now, 4
Telegram to Alex/Bagel Shop, North Beach SF, 14
The American Sun, 61
THE AMERICAN SUN HAS RISEN, 61
The Ancient Rain, 75
The Celebrated White-Cap Spelling Bee, 44
THE CELEBRATED WHITE-CAP SPELLING BEE WAS WON BY A SPELLING BEE, 44
The descendants of dinosaurs are quicksand men, holy crime, 10
THE EARTH MOVED AND CHANGED ITS, 66
THE NIGHT THAT LORCA COMES, 60
The Poet, 68
THE POET NAILED ON, 73
The Secret Life of Robert Frost, 46
These days and weeks, 6
THE SUN IS A NEGRO, 59
The traveling circus crossed the unicorn, 25
They have dismantled, 41
TO BREAK THE SPELL OF SUNDAY, 27
Transaction, 27
Unanimity Has Been Achieved, Not a Dot Less for Its Accidentalness, 16
Walk Sounds, 31
War Memoir: Jazz, Don’t Listen at Your Own Risk, 32
We cut our teeth on oyster shells, 5
White tiger I hear your, 30
You are with me Oregon, 58
Copyright © 1958, 1959, 1960, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1980, 1981 by Bob Kaufman
Copyright © 1981 by Raymond Foye
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors and publishers of the following journals and magazines in which some of these poems first appeared: Bastard Angel, Beatitude, Ins and Outs, Semina, and Vanishing Cab.
The first stanza of “Picasso’s Balcony” first appeared in Bob Kaufman’s Golden Sardine. (Copyright © 1967 by Bob Kaufman. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.)
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