Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 187

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     Hearted mental

Tones sing & play

     Guitar in bright day

     Voicing always

     Melodies, please

Sing sad, & say

     Whatever you may

     Righteous honest

     Heart’s forgiveness

Drives woes away,

     Gives Love to cold clay

Tubingen, December 16, 1979

Verses Written for Student Antidraft Registration Rally 1980

The Warrior is afraid

the warrior has a big trembling heart

the warrior sees bright explosions over Utah, a giant bomber moves over Cheyenne Mountain at Colorado Springs

the warrior laughs at its shadow, his thought flows out with his breath and dissolves in afternoon light

The warrior never goes to War

War runs away from the warrior’s mouth

War falls apart in the warrior’s mind

The Conquered go to War, drafted into shadow armies, navy’d on shadow oceans, flying in shadow fire

only helpless Draftees fight afraid, big meaty negroes trying not to die—

The Warrior knows his own sad & tender heart, which is not the heart of most newspapers

Which is not the heart of most Television—This kind of sadness doesn’t sell popcorn

This kind of sadness never goes to war, never spends $100 Billion on MX Missile systems, never fights shadows in Utah,

never hides inside a hollow mountain near Colorado Springs with North American Aerospace Defense Command

waiting orders that he press the Secret button to Blow up the Great Cities of Earth

Shambhala, Colorado, March 15, 1980

Homework

Homage Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran

I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,

I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,

Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,

Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal

Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,

Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,

Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie

Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,

Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,

& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean.

Boulder, April 26, 1980

After Whitman & Reznikoff

1

What Relief

If my pen hand were snapped by a Broadway truck

—What relief from writing letters to the Nation

disputing tyrants, war gossip, FBI—

My poems’ll gather dust in Kansas libraries,

adolescent farmboys opening book covers with ruddy hands.

2

Lower East Side

That round faced woman, she owns the street with her three big dogs,

screeches at me, waddling with her shopping bag across Avenue B

Grabbing my crotch, “Why don’t you talk to me?”

baring her teeth in a smile, voice loud like a taxi horn,

“Big Jerk … you think you’re famous?”—reminds me of my mother.

April 29, 1980

Reflections at Lake Louise

     I

At midnight the teacher lectures on his throne

Gongs, bells, wooden fish, tingling brass

Transcendent Doctrines, non-meditation, old dog barks

Past present future burn in Candleflame

incense fills intellects—

Mornings I wake, forgetting my dreams,

dreary hearted, lift my body out of bed

shave, wash, sit, bow down to the ground for hours.

     II

Which country is real, mine or the teacher’s?

Going back & forth I cross the Canada border, unguarded,

     guilty, smuggling 10,000 thoughts.

III

Sometimes my guru seems a Hell King, sometimes a King in Eternity,

     sometimes a newspaper story, sometimes familiar eyed

          father, lonely mother, hard working—

Poor man! to give me birth who may never grow up

     and earn my own living.

May 7, 1980

     IV

Now the sky’s clearer, clouds lifted, a patch of blue

shows above Mt. Victoria. I should go walking to the Plain of the Six Glaciers

but I have to eat Oryoki style, prostrate hours in the basement, study for Vajrayana Exams—

If I had a heart attack on the path around the lake would I be ready to face my mother?

Noon

     V

Scandal in the Buddhafields

     The lake’s covered with soft ice inches thick.

Naked, he insulted me under the glacier!

     He raped my mind on the wet granite cliffs!

He misquoted me in the white mists all over the Nation.

Hurrah! the Clouds drift apart!

     Big chunks of blue sky fall down!

Mount Victoria stands with a mouth full of snow.

     VI

I wander this path along little Lake Louise, the teacher’s too busy to see me,

my dharma friends think I’m crazy, or worse, a lonely neurotic, maybe I am—

Alone in the mountains, same as in snowy streets of New York.

     VII

Trapped in the Guru’s Chateau surrounded by 300 disciples

I could go home to Cherry Valley, Manhattan, Nevada City

to be a farmer forever, die in Lower East Side slums, sit with no lightbulbs in the forest,

Return to my daily mail Secretary, Hard Times, Junk mail and love letters, get wrinkled old in Manhattan

Fly out and sing poetry, bring home windmills, grow tomatoes and Marijuana

chop wood, do Zazen, obey my friends, muse in Gary’s Maidu Territory, study acorn mush,

Here I’m destined to study the Higher Tantras and be a slave of Enlightenment.

Where can I go, how choose? Either way my life stands before me,

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