Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 70

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O mother with eyes of delightful movies enter at last into amorous play united with all Presidents of US.

Bombay, 1962

To P.O.

The whitewashed room, roof

of a third-rate Mohammedan hotel,

two beds, blurred fan

whirling over yr brown guitar,

knapsack open on floor, towel

hanging from chair, Orange Crush,

brown paper manuscript packages,

Tibetan tankas, Gandhi pajamas,

Ramakrishna Gospel, bright umbrella

a mess on a rickety wooden stand,

the yellow wall-bulb lights up

this scene Calcutta for the thirtieth night—

Come in the green door, long Western gold

hair plastered down your shoulders

from shower: “Did we take our pills

this week for malaria?” Happy birthday

dear Peter, your 29th year.

Calcutta, July 8, 1962

Heat

Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel

Covered with old gray for buzzing flies

Eye like mango flowing orange pus

Ears Durga people vomiting in their sleep

Got huge legs a dozen buses move inside Calcutta

Swallowing mouthfuls of dead rats

Mangy dogs bark out of a thousand breasts

Garbage pouring from its ass behind alleys

Always pissing yellow Hooghly water

Bellybutton melted Chinatown brown puddles

Coughing lungs Sound going down the sewer

Nose smell a big gray Bidi

Heart bumping and crashing over tramcar tracks

Covered with a hat of cloudy iron

Suffering water buffalo head lowered

To pull the huge cart of year uphill

Calcutta, July 21, 1962

Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat

Kali Ma tottering up steps to shelter tin roof, feeling her way to curb, around bicycle & leper seated on her way—to piss on a broom

left by the Stone Cutters who last night were shaking the street with Boom! of Stone blocks unloaded from truck

Forcing the blindman in his gray rags to retreat from his spot in the middle of the road where he sleeps & shakes under his blanket

Jai Ram all night telling his beads or sex on a burlap carpet

Past which cows donkeys dogs camels elephants marriage processions drummers tourists lepers and bathing devotees

step to the whine of serpent-pipes & roar of car motors around his black ears—

Today on a balcony in shorts leaning on iron rail I watched the leper who sat hidden behind a bicycle

emerge dragging his buttocks on the gray rainy ground by the glove-bandaged stumps of hands,

one foot chopped off below knee, round stump-knob wrapped with black rubber

pushing a tin can shiny size of his head with left hand (from which only a thumb emerged from leprous swathings)

beside him, lifting it with both ragbound palms down the curb into the puddled road,

balancing his body down next to the can & crawling forward on his behind

trailing a heavy rag for seat, and leaving a path thru the street wavering

like the Snail’s slime track—imprint of his crawl on the muddy asphalt market entrance—stopping

to drag his can along stubbornly konking on the paved surface near the water pump—

Where a turban’d workman stared at him moving along—his back humped with rags—

and inquired why didn’t he put his can to wash in the pump altarplace—and why go that way when free rice

Came from the alley back there by the river—As the leper looked up & rested, conversing curiously, can by his side approaching a puddle.

Kali had pissed standing up & then felt her way back to the Shop Steps on thin brown legs

her hands in the air—feeling with feet for her rag pile on the stone steps’ wetness—

as a cow busied its mouth chewing her rags left wet on the ground for five minutes digesting

Till the comb-&-hair-oil-booth keeper woke & chased her away with a stick

Because a dog barked at a madman with dirty wild black hair who rag round his midriff & water pot in hand

Stopped in midstreet turned round & gazed up at the balconies, windows, shops and city stagery filled with glum activity

Shrugged & said Jai Shankar! to the imaginary audience of Me’s,

While a white robed Baul Singer carrying his one stringed dried pumpkin Guitar

Sat down near the cigarette stand and surveyed his new scene, just arrived in the Holy City of Benares.

Benares, February 1963

Death News

Visit to W.C. W. circa 1957, poets Kerouac Corso Orlovsky on sofa in living room inquired wise words, stricken Williams pointed thru window curtained on Main Street: “There’s a lot of bastards out there!”

Walking at night on asphalt campus

road by the German Instructor with Glasses

W. C. Williams is dead he said in accent

under the trees in Benares; I stopped and asked

Williams is Dead? Enthusiastic and wide-eyed

under the Big Dipper. Stood on the Porch

of the International House Annex bungalow

insects buzzing round the electric light

reading the Medical obituary in Time.

“out among the sparrows behind the shutters”

Williams is in the Big Dipper. He isn’t dead

as the many pages of words arranged thrill

with his intonations the mouths of meek kids

becoming subtle even in Bengal. Thus

there’s a life moving out of his pages; Blake

also “alive” thru his experienced machines.

Were his last words anything Black out there

in the carpeted bedroom of the gabled wood house

in Rutherford? Wonder what he said,

or was there anything left in realms of speech

after the stroke & brain-thrill doom entered

his thoughts? If I pray to his soul in Bardo Thodol

he may hear the unexpected vibration of foreign mercy.

Quietly unknown for three weeks; now I saw Passaic

and Ganges one, consenting his devotion,

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