Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 154
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(1972–1974)
Ayers Rock / Uluru Song
When the red pond fills fish appear
When the red pond dries fish disappear.
Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.
Electric cable transmission wires swept down.
The lizard people came out of the rock.
The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.
Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.
One rain turns red dust green with leaves.
One raindrop begins the universe.
When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end.
Central Australia, March 23, 1972
Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling”
Must be thousands of sweet gourmets rustling through
leaf crowded branches, thrushes cracking seedling shells
all over America like crystalline carillon bells,
a really strange silent tingling.
Silent carillons, not to celebrate Main Street
but rustling up some food their only scene—
No miracle but millions of hungry souls
silently tingling.
This tingling silence heralds
an orgy of hermit thrushes eating
like thousands of song-men’s clapsticks clacking
or faraway Moscow’s million bells
—some dream collective—generational vogue.
Thrush communes don’t be afraid of the big Broom,
your flock continues an ancient tradition,
now all over America—collective marriage;
though some detractors put down your in-group, not big enough!
A silent Individualist in top hat & tails drest
coffinlike denounces your collective struggles in bed—
but his own wife wears rings on every finger,
as if she wound up in a group marriage.
This gentle gang’s only enemy’s insects,
Cleaning up bark parasites—silently, silently—
Anybody can crush bones and oink louder
but cant beat this silent tingling.
Fast New York Sydney chicks—
thanks Brisbane birds & Chicago thrushes
for your own silent tingling—your cities’ trees’
leaves tremble like golden curlicues on Byzantine crosses.
Maybe someday our descendants
’ll ask about this poet—What’d he sing about?
I didn’t ring Halleluiah bells, I didn’t clank leg-irons,
I was silently tingling.
Translated with Andrei Voznesensky
Darwin Land—Cairns, Australia, March 26–29, 1972
These States: to Miami Presidential Convention
I
Philadelphia city lights boiling under the clouds
green Babylon’s heat attracting rain,
lightning, smoke gathered
about the excited city—shouts, vibration
of trucks, radio antennae, streets’
solid electric glitter under sulphur waterfumes—
the plane glides to Miami Beach over Atlantic’s
Coast metropolis
red downtown sores of theater money,
bar sign pinprick bulbs under
Cloud curtain’d sunlit velvet horizon
To the political drama, march to
Auditorium thru tacky downtown
Cuban neons blinking angry language,
Yippies survived unto this Presidentiad!
Woe to the States, whoever’s the empty President
Nixon McGovern X or Caesar
Must decree end to matter habit,
America swallowing aluminum sleep pills
Cries of millions of trees travel thru TV
loudspeakers to the Athletic Club’s basement steamroom—
Millions of yellow faces call thru radio
Cries of the longhairs in the Rockies,
Choruses of American prophets in their graves
echo thru newspaper horns to the
Ear Consciousness Mind
Matter Consumption must end,
Dirty alchemy destroys the House—
Billion year old leaf plates become inert matter
Plastic particles mixed
with living cells in the Walleyed
pike’s retina—
Soaring over Atlantic’s lit-up electric
houses to the politics Warre
Ah! Shall be my mantra—America’s gasp of Awe—
Ah as Fireworks ascend & light glitters
faery shimmering in treetop darkness
sky over Eastside Park July 4th—Ah
As the enlightened Aborigine sighs his
soul-journey with birds to New Guinea
Ah! the madman screamed
to himself in the silence of the Ward
Ah as car owner collapsed into
his ruined heap of metal on his own
Front Yard
Ah! the divorcee steps off her plane onto Mexico City Airport—
Ah! as I ride spitting petrol into the exquisite
Midnight Atmosphere
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