Looking at naked baby pictures in the magazine—baby powder advertisements, strained lamb carrots—‘I will think nothing but beautiful thoughts.’
Revolving her head round and round on her neck at window light in summertime, in hypnotize, in doven-dream recall—
‘I touch his cheek, I touch his cheek, he touches my lips with his hand, I think beautiful thoughts, the baby has a beautiful hand.’—
Or a No-shake of her body, disgust—some thought of Buchenwald—some insulin passes thru her head—a grimace nerve shudder at Involuntary (as shudder when I piss)—bad chemical in her cortex—‘No don’t think of that. He’s a rat.’
Naomi: ‘And when we die we become an onion, a cabbage, a carrot, or a squash, a vegetable.’ I come downtown from Columbia and agree. She reads the Bible, thinks beautiful thoughts all day.
‘Yesterday I saw God. What did he look like? Well, in the afternoon I climbed up a ladder—he has a cheap cabin in the country, like Monroe, NY the chicken farms in the wood. He was a lonely old man with a white beard.
‘I cooked supper for him. I made him a nice supper— lentil soup, vegetables, bread & butter—miltz—he sat down at the table and ate, he was sad.
‘I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there, What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?
‘I try, he said—That’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.’
Serving me meanwhile, a plate of cold fish—chopped raw cabbage dript with tapwater—smelly tomatoes—week-old health food—grated beets & carrots with leaky juice, warm—more and more disconsolate food—I can’t eat it for nausea sometimes—the Charity of her hands stinking with Manhattan, madness, desire to please me, cold undercooked fish—pale red near the bones. Her smells—and oft naked in the room, so that I stare ahead, or turn a book ignoring her.
One time I thought she was trying to make me come lay her—flirting to herself at sink—lay back on huge bed that filled most of the room, dress up round her hips, big slash of hair, scars of operations, pancreas, belly wounds, abortions, appendix, stitching of incisions pulling down in the fat like hideous thick zippers—ragged long lips between her legs—What, even, smell of asshole? I was cold—later revolted a little, not much—seemed perhaps a good idea to try—know the Monster of the Beginning Womb—Perhaps—that way. Would she care? She needs a lover.
Yisborach, v’yistabach, v’yispoar, v’yisroman, v’yisnaseh, v’yishador, v’yishalleh, v’yishallol, sh’meh d’kudsho, b’rich hu.
And Louis reestablishing himself in Paterson grimy apartment in negro district—living in dark rooms—but found himself a girl he later married, falling in love again—tho sere & shy—hurt with 20 years Naomi’s mad idealism.
Once I came home, after longtime in N.Y., he’s lonely— sitting in the bedroom, he at desk chair turned round to face me—weeps, tears in red eyes under his glasses—
That we’d left him—Gene gone strangely into army— she out on her own in NY, almost childish in her furnished room. So Louis walked downtown to postoffice to get mail, taught in highschool—stayed at poetry desk, forlorn—ate grief at Bickford’s all these years—are gone.
Eugene got out of the Army, came home changed and lone—cut off his nose in jewish operation—for years stopped girls on Broadway for cups of coffee to get laid—Went to NYU, serious there, to finish Law.—
And Gene lived with her, ate naked fishcakes, cheap, while she got crazier—He got thin, or felt helpless, Naomi striking 1920 poses at the moon, half-naked in the next bed.
bit his nails and studied—was the weird nurse-son—Next year he moved to a room near Columbia—though she wanted to live with her children—
‘Listen to your mother’s plea, I beg you’—Louis still sending her checks—I was in bughouse that year 8 months— my own visions unmentioned in this here Lament—
But then went half mad—Hitler in her room, she saw his mustache in the sink—afraid of Dr Isaac now, suspecting that he was in on the Newark plot—went up to Bronx to live near Elanor’s Rheumatic Heart—
And Uncle Max never got up before noon, tho Naomi at 6 AM was listening to the radio for spies—or searching the windowsill,
for in the empty lot downstairs, an old man creeps with his bag stuffing packages of garbage in his hanging black overcoat.
Max’s sister Edie works—17 years bookeeper at Gimbels— lived downstairs in apartment house, divorced—so Edie took in Naomi on Rochambeau Ave—
Woodlawn Cemetery across the street, vast dale of graves where Poe once—Last stop on Bronx subway—lots of communists in that area.
Who enrolled for painting classes at night in Bronx Adult High School—walked alone under Van Corlandt Elevated line to class—paints Naomiisms—
Humans sitting on the grass in some Camp No-Worry summers yore—saints with droopy faces and long-ill-fitting pants, from hospital—
Brides in front of Lower East Side with short grooms— lost El trains running over the Babylonian apartment rooftops in the Bronx—
Sad paintings—but she expressed herself. Her mandolin gone, all strings broke in her head, she tried. Toward Beauty? or some old life Message?
But started kicking Elanor, and Elanor had heart trouble— came upstairs and asked her about Spydom for hours,—Elanor frazzled. Max away at office, accounting for cigar stores till at night.
‘I am a great woman—am truly a beautiful soul—and because of that they (Hitler, Grandma, Hearst, the Capitalists, Franco, Daily News, the 20’s, Mussolini, the living dead) want to shut me up—Buba’s the head of a spider network—’
Kicking the girls, Edie & Elanor—Woke Edie at midnite to tell her she was a spy and Elanor a rat. Edie worked all day and couldn’t take it—She was organizing the union.—And Elanor began dying, upstairs in bed.
The relatives call me up, she’s getting worse—I was the only one left—Went on the subway with Eugene to see her, ate stale fish—
‘My sister whispers in the radio—Louis must be in the apartment—his mother tells him what to say—LIARS!—I cooked for my two children—I played the mandolin—’
Last night the nightingale woke me/ Last night when all was still/ it sang in the golden moonlight/ from on the wintry hill. She did.
I pushed her against the door and shouted ‘DON’T KICK ELANOR!’—she stared at me—Contempt—die—disbelief her sons are so naive, so dumb—‘Elanor is the worst spy! She’s taking orders!’
‘—No wires in the room!’—I’m yelling at her—last ditch, Eugene listening on the bed—what can he do to escape that fatal Mama—‘You’ve been away from Louis years already— Grandma’s too old to walk—’
We’re all alive at once then—even me & Gene & Naomi in one mythological Cousinesque room—screaming at each other in the Forever—I in Columbia jacket, she half undressed.
I banging against her head which saw Radios, Sticks, Hitlers—the gamut of Hallucinations—for real—her own universe—no road that goes elsewhere—to my own—No America, not even a world—
That you go as all men, as Van Gogh, as mad Hannah, all the same—to the last doom—Thunder, Spirits, Lightning!
I’ve seen your grave! O strange Naomi! My own—cracked grave! Shema Y’Israel—I am Svul Avrum—you—in death?
Your last night in the darkness of the Bronx—I phone-called—thru hospital to secret police.
That came, when you and I were alone, shrieking at Elanor in my ear—who breathed hard in her own bed, got thin—
Nor will forget, the doorknock, at your fright of spies,— Law advancing, on my honor—Eternity entering the room— you running to the bathroom undressed, hiding in protest from the last heroic fate—
staring at my eyes, betrayed—the final cops of madness rescuing me—from your foot against the broken heart of Elanor,
your voice at Edie weary of Gimbels coming home to broken radio—and Louis needing a poor divorce, he wants to ge
t married soon—Eugene dreaming, hiding at 125 St., suing negroes for money on crud furniture, defending black girls—
Protests from the bathroom—Said you were sane— dressing in a cotton robe, your shoes, then new, your purse and newspaper clippings—no—your honesty—
as you vainly made your lips more real with lipstick, looking in the mirror to see if the Insanity was Me or a carful of police.
or Grandma spying at 78—Your vision—Her climbing over the walls of the cemetery with political kidnapper’s bag—or what you saw on the walls of the Bronx, in pink nightgown at midnight, staring out the window on the empty lot—
Ah Rochambeau Ave—Playground of Phantoms—last apartment in the Bronx for spies—last home for Elanor or Naomi, here these communist sisters lost their revolution—
‘All right—put on your coat Mrs.—let’s go—We have the wagon downstairs—you want to come with her to the station?’
The ride then—held Naomi’s hand, and held her head to my breast, I’m taller—kissed her and said I did it for the best—Elanor sick—and Max with heart condition—Needs—
To me—‘Why did you do this?’—‘Yes Mrs., your son will have to leave you in an hour’—The Ambulance
came in a few hours—drove off at 4 AM to some Bellevue in the night downtown—gone to the hospital forever. I saw her led away—she waved, tears in her eyes.
Two years, after a trip to Mexico—bleak in the flat plain near Brentwood, scrub brush and grass around the unused RR train track to the crazyhouse—
new brick 20 story central building—lost on the vast lawns of madtown on Long Island—huge cities of the moon.
Asylum spreads out giant wings above the path to a minute black hole—the door—entrance thru crotch—
I went in—smelt funny—the halls again—up elevator— to a glass door on a Woman’s Ward—to Naomi—Two nurses buxom white—They led her out, Naomi stared—and I gaspt— She’d had a stroke—
Too thin, shrunk on her bones—age come to Naomi— now broken into white hair—loose dress on her skeleton—face sunk, old! withered—cheek of crone—
One hand stiff—heaviness of forties & menopause reduced by one heart stroke, lame now—wrinkles—a scar on her head, the lobotomy—ruin, the hand dipping downwards to death—
O Russian faced, woman on the grass, your long black hair is crowned with flowers, the mandolin is on your knees—
Communist beauty, sit here married in the summer among daisies, promised happiness at hand—
holy mother, now you smile on your love, your world is born anew, children run naked in the field spotted with dandelions,
they eat in the plum tree grove at the end of the meadow and find a cabin where a white-haired negro teaches the mystery of his rainbarrel—
blessed daughter come to America, I long to hear your voice again, remembering your mother’s music, in the Song of the Natural Front—
O glorious muse that bore me from the womb, gave suck first mystic life & taught me talk and music, from whose pained head I first took Vision—
Tortured and beaten in the skull—What mad hallucinations of the damned that drive me out of my own skull to seek Eternity till I find Peace for Thee, O Poetry—and for all humankind call on the Origin
Death which is the mother of the universe!—Now wear your nakedness forever, white flowers in your hair, your marriage sealed behind the sky—no revolution might destroy that maidenhood—
O beautiful Garbo of my Karma—all photographs from 1920 in Camp Nicht-Gedeiget here unchanged—with all the teachers from Newark—Nor Elanor be gone, nor Max await his specter—nor Louis retire from this High School—
Back! You! Naomi! Skull on you! Gaunt immortality and revolution come—small broken woman—the ashen indoor eyes of hospitals, ward greyness on skin—
‘Are you a spy?’ I sat at the sour table, eyes filling with tears—‘Who are you? Did Louis send you?—The wires—’
in her hair, as she beat on her head—‘I’m not a bad girl— don’t murder me!—I hear the ceiling—I raised two children—’
Two years since I’d been there—I started to cry—She stared—nurse broke up the meeting a moment—I went into the bathroom to hide, against the toilet white walls
‘The Horror’ I weeping—to see her again—‘The Horror’—as if she were dead thru funeral rot in—‘The Horror!’
I came back she yelled more—they led her away—‘You’re not Allen—’ I watched her face—but she passed by me, not looking—
Opened the door to the ward,—she went thru without a glance back, quiet suddenly—I stared out—she looked old— the verge of the grave—‘All the Horror!’
Another year, I left NY—on West Coast in Berkeley cottage dreamed of her soul—that, thru life, in what form it stood in that body, ashen or manic, gone beyond joy—
near its death—with eyes—was my own love in its form, the Naomi, my mother on earth still—sent her long letter— & wrote hymns to the mad—Work of the merciful Lord of Poetry.
that causes the broken grass to be green, or the rock to break in grass—or the Sun to be constant to earth—Sun of all sunflowers and days on bright iron bridges—what shines on old hospitals—as on my yard—
Returning from San Francisco one night, Orlovsky in my room—Whalen in his peaceful chair—a telegram from Gene, Naomi dead—
Outside I bent my head to the ground under the bushes near the garage—knew she was better—
at last—not left to look on Earth alone—2 years of solitude—no one, at age nearing 60—old woman of skulls—once long-tressed Naomi of Bible—
or Ruth who wept in America—Rebecca aged in Newark—David remembering his Harp, now lawyer at Yale or Svul Avrum—Israel Abraham—myself—to sing in the wilderness toward God—O Elohim!—so to the end—2 days after her death I got her letter—
Strange Prophecies anew! She wrote—‘The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window—I have the key—Get married Allen don’t take drugs—the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window.
Love,
your mother’
which is Naomi—
HYMMNN
In the world which He has created according to his will Blessed Praised
Magnified Lauded Exalted the Name of the Holy One Blessed is He!
In the house in Newark Blessed is He! In the madhouse Blessed is He! In the house of Death Blessed is He!
Blessed be He in homosexuality! Blessed be He in Paranoia! Blessed be He in the city! Blessed be He in the Book!
Blessed be He who dwells in the shadow! Blessed be He! Blessed be He!
Blessed be you Naomi in tears! Blessed be you Naomi in fears! Blessed Blessed Blessed in sickness!
Blessed be you Naomi in Hospitals! Blessed be you Naomi in solitude! Blest be your triumph! Blest be your bars! Blest be your last years’ loneliness!
Blest be your failure! Blest be your stroke! Blest be the close of your eye! Blest be the gaunt of your cheek! Blest be your withered thighs!
Blessed be Thee Naomi in Death! Blessed be Death! Blessed be Death!
Blessed be He Who leads all sorrow to Heaven! Blessed be He in the end!
Blessed be He who builds Heaven in Darkness! Blessed Blessed Blessed be He! Blessed be He! Blessed be Death on us All!
III
Only to have not forgotten the beginning in which she drank cheap sodas in the morgues of Newark,
only to have seen her weeping on grey tables in long wards of her universe
only to have known the weird ideas of Hitler at the door, the wires in her head, the three big sticks
rammed down her back, the voices in the ceiling shrieking out her ugly early lays for 30 years,
only to have seen the time-jumps, memory lapse, the crash of wars, the roar and silence of a vast electric shock,
only to have seen her painting crude pictures of Elevateds running over the rooftops of the Bronx
her br
others dead in Riverside or Russia, her lone in Long Island writing a last letter—and her image in the sunlight at the window
‘The key is in the sunlight at the window in the bars the key is in the sunlight,’
only to have come to that dark night on iron bed by stroke when the sun gone down on Long Island
and the vast Atlantic roars outside the great call of Being to its own
to come back out of the Nightmare—divided creation—with her head lain on a pillow of the hospital to die
—in one last glimpse—all Earth one everlasting Light in the familiar blackout—no tears for this vision—
But that the key should be left behind—at the window—the key in the sunlight—to the living—that can take
that slice of light in hand—and turn the door—and look back see
Creation glistening backwards to the same grave, size of universe,
size of the tick of the hospital’s clock on the archway over the white door—
IV
O mother
what have I left out
O mother
what have I forgotten
O mother
farewell
with a long black shoe
farewell
with Communist Party and a broken stocking
farewell
with six dark hairs on the wen of your breast
farewell
with your old dress and a long black beard around the vagina
farewell
with your sagging belly
with your fear of Hitler
with your mouth of bad short stories
with your fingers of rotten mandolines
with your arms of fat Paterson porches
with your belly of strikes and smokestacks
with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish War
with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers
with your nose of bad lay with your nose of the smell of the pickles of Newark
with your eyes
with your eyes of Russia
with your eyes of no money
with your eyes of false China
Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems Page 5
