Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 173

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The hearth seat was moved, the porphyry throne worn smooth by the sea’s muscles

His eyes fell down to the messenger’s foot, toes spread firm on the runed lintel:

THE RUNE

Where the years have gone,     where the clouds have flown

                                   Where the rainbow shone

We vanish,     and we make no moan

Where the sun will blind     the delighting mind

                                   in a diamond wind

We appear,     our beauty refined.

Icy intellect,     fi’ry Beauty wreck

                                   but Love’s castled speck

of Moonbeam,     nor is Truth correct.

Wise bodies leave here     with the mind’s false cheer,

                                   Eternity near

as Beauty,     where we disappear.

When sufferings come,     when all tongues lie dumb

                                   when Bliss is all numb

with knowledge,     a bony white sum,

We die neither blest     nor with curse confessed

                                   wanting Earth’s worst Best:

But return,     where all Beauties rest.

January 17–22, 1977

The Rune

II

THE ARGUMENT: The Rune having been discovered by the Boy to the Man, the messenger commands the Hermit Sage to go out into the world with him, seek the ancient unearthly Beauty the riddle indicated. The old man gets mad, he says he’s near death, has lost Desire. The boy reads his mind and lies down with the sage to make love. At dawn he gets up says he’s disgusted with the body, condemns the sage to Chastity, demands the hermit leave his cell forever, and promises to lead him to the land of Poetry in the Sky. Exasperated, the old bard reveals the secret of the mysterious riddle.

And the old man silver bearded gold faced bald kneeling at his black cave’s ruddy fireplace

Read the airy verses, humming them to himself, hands to the cold floor to support his aching spine

watery eyed, one palsied cheek the muscles of the eyelid weak

dripped with empty tears, unsorrowful soul’d, conning & eyeing the bright rhymes’ No Truth

Unfrowning, pondering old thought arisen on a breath from Meditation’s hour—

Inspirations drawing populous-hued tides of living plasm thru seaweed pipes

from breast to brain, phantasms of interior ocean freshening the surface of the eyeball,

old breath familiar exhaling into starry space that held shore & heaven

where sat his tiny stone house, lost in black winds lapped by black waters fishy eyed

oft phosphorescent when jellied monster sprites floated to the golden sand,

wet bubbles of vehemence mouth’d by a ripple, tiny translucent spirits

dried in the eyebeams of the frowning Face o’ the moon, with the tip of a planet

beaming twinkled deeper in Blackness washed by deep waves in the ear.

Dead bearded propped on his knees the old bard stared thru his beating mind’s universe

At sharp stanza’d riddles chiseled with thought & filled with wise gold

at the bright colored foot of the boy, reddened by light of driftwood afire.

“What is your mind?” yelled the youth, his proud contention shaped on red little lips

beardless, ready to argue & instruct for he had dreamed well clear accurate

Each stony word, each flame of the hearth fire, each tear in the eyelid of the elder Sage,

each silver lock of hair, each worried frown wrinkling that skull, each conscious smile

that crept along the prophet’s thick lips involuntary, who knelt still

at the young teacher’s knees—“What Beauty’s stopped your Poetry! old speaker-forth

of Naked Thoughts?” the ruddy legged messenger laughed down, skillfultongued, black eye beaming merry—

“Will you obey my will and follow me through a riot of cities, to delicateporched countryhouses

& rich polished-marble mansions, where we’ll sport with Princes & Millionaires

and make fun of the world’s kings and Presidents Pomps & Limousines all present in their Unbeauty?

Come leave your stupid business of seashells & seawrack, gathering wrinkles of the sea?

Come with your pearls and banks of Ambergris hidden under yr bed & in yr stone closets?

Come wrapped with seaweed round your belly & Neptunic laurel moist on yr skull’s half century?

Carry yr vowelic conch & give blast midnights in Midcity canyons Wall Street to Washington,

Granite Pillars echoing ocean mouthed pearly syllables along Chicago’s Lakeshore

& reverberating in Pittsburgh’s National Banks—Dance with the golden Trident of Fame in Hollywood

Lift the Inspired Lyre to Strike the Ears of hotels in Los Angeles?”

The old man changed his thought, and stared in the boy’s eye, interrupting his beauty—

His voice grown wrathful, he lifted himself up on his haunches & glared

at the childish youth’s face till it paled, brow furrowed in self consideration

small mouth open breathing doubtful thoughts, and tiny sighs uttered to match his listening.

“Innocent!” the squinting bearded palsied resentful Shaman yelled,

“Come over sunshine colored hills naked thru suburbs boasting

Your beauty intelligence and sexual joy O Delicate Skulled Youth,

You bring news of old prophecy! You wake my wrathful Desires!

old lust for mental power and vain body’d joy! Blind craving for Bliss

of Breast and Loins! Shadow Conquest! Uncompassionate Angel!

Know th’ emptiness your own Soul? Think you’re a king in oceans of Thought?

Neptune himself with his Crown of drown’d gold over a beardless face

pale ivory with vanity! Re-waken ignorant desires no mortal boy can satisfy?

I go to a death you never dreamed, in iron oceans! homeless skull

washed underwave with octopus and seahorse, flicked by soft wings of pink fish my eyelids!

Teeth a silver wormhouse on the sandy bottom, polypus & green-suckered squid in my ribs, wavy

snake-tailed insensible kelp and water-cactus footed in watery loins! clams breathe

their cold valved zephyrs where my heart ached on translucent shelves! Typhoons carry my voice away!

There is no God or Beauty suffering on earth nor starred in nebulous blue heaven

but only Dream that floats vast as an Ocean under the moon—

The moon, the cold full moon, boy, fills the window—look at the sea

waving with lunar glitter like your eye—out there’s the moon

Mirror to give back cold pure cheer light on us, fade these Plutonian Images.

There’s a clear light without soul or vanity shining thru the stone window

shafting square on that rune uncovered at the hearth—the fire’s down but we can read it still—

Hermetic years’ve passed me by here, Cooled my anger like this moonlight cools the eye

—my loves & all desires burnt away, like this hearth’s wood to ash.”

“Behind the ashes of your face your mind wanders strongly—what your mind was

I knew as a young boy of books and dreams” the messenger replied calm voiced

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