Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 12

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eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border

or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman;

rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun;

rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati;

rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies;

rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver,

pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain,

come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage,

streetcorner Evangel in front of City Hall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions,

with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp,

screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality,

screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world,

blood streaming from my belly and shoulders

flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways

by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.

New York, November 1949

Bop Lyrics

When I think of death

   I get a goofy feeling;

Then I catch my breath:

   Zero is appealing,

     Appearances are hazy.

     Smart went crazy,

     Smart went crazy.

*

A flower in my head

   Has fallen through my eye;

Someday I’ll be dead:

   I love the Lord on high,

     I wish He’d pull my daisy.

     Smart went crazy,

     Smart went crazy.

*

I asked the lady what’s a rose,

   She kicked me out of bed.

I asked the man, and so it goes,

   He hit me on the head.

     Nobody knows,

     Nobody knows,

   At least nobody’s said.

*

The time I went to China

To lead the boy scout troops,

They sank my ocean liner,

And all I said was “Oops!”

*

All the doctors think I’m crazy;

The truth is really that I’m lazy:

I made visions to beguile ’em

Till they put me in th’asylum

*

I’m a pot and God’s a potter,

And my head’s a piece of putty.

   Ark my darkness,

   Lark my looks,

I’m so lucky to be nutty.

New York, March-December 1949

A Dream

I waked at midmost in the night,

Dim lamp shuddering in the bell,

House enwracked with natal light

That glowed as in a ghostly shell.

I rose and darked the hornlike flare,

And watched the shadows in the room

Crawl on walls and empty air

Through the window from the moon.

I stared in phantom-attic dark

At such radiant shapes of gloom,

I thought my fancy and mind’s lark

So cried for Death that He had come.

As sleepy-faced night walkers go,

Room to room, and down the stair,

Through the labyrinth to and fro,

So I paced sleepless in nightmare.

I walked out to the city tower,

Where, as in a stony cell,

Time lay prisoned, and twelfth hour

Complained upon the midnight bell.

I met a boy on the city street,

Fair was his hair, and fair his eyes,

Walking in his winding sheet,

As fair as was my own disguise.

He walked his way in a white shroud,

His cheek was whiter than his gown.

He looked at me, and spoke aloud,

And all his voice was but a groan:

“My love is dreaming of me now,

For I have dreamed him oft so well

That in my ghostly sleep I go

To find him by the midnight bell.

And so I walk and speak these lines

Which he will hear and understand.

If some poor wandering child of time

Finds me, let him take my hand,

And I will lead him to the stone,

And I will lead him through the grave,

But let him fear no light of bone,

And let him fear no dark of wave,

And we will walk the double door

That breaks upon the ageless night,

Where I have come, and must once more

Return, and so forsake the light.”

The darkness that is half disguised

In the Zodiac of my dream

Gazed on me in his bleak eyes,

And I became what now I seem.

Once my crown was silk and black;

I have dreamed, and I awake.

Now that time has wormed my cheek,

Horns and willows me bespeak.

Paterson, December 1949

Long Live the Spiderweb

Seven years’ words wasted

waiting on the spiderweb:

          seven years’ thoughts

harkening the host,

          seven years’ lost

sentience naming images,

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