Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 40

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rainbow over machinery

and backtalk to the sun

I lie in bed in Europe

alone in old red under

wear symbolic of desire

for union with immortality

but man’s love’s not perfect

in February it rains

as once for Baudelaire

one hundred years ago

planes roar in the air

cars race thru streets

I know where they go

to death but that is OK

it is that death comes

before life that no man

has loved perfectly no one

gets bliss in time new

mankind is not born that

I weep for this antiquity

and herald the Millennium

for I saw the Atlantic sun

rayed down from a vast cloud

at Dover on the sea cliffs

tanker size of ant heaved

up on ocean under shining

cloud and seagull flying

thru sun light’s endless

ladders streaming in Eternity

to ants in the myriad fields

of England to sun flowers

bent up to eat infinity’s

minute gold dolphins leaping

thru Mediterranean rainbow

White smoke and steam in Andes

Asia’s rivers glittering

blind poets deep in lone

Apollonic radiance on hillsides

littered with empty tombs

Paris, February 29, 1958

The Lion for Real

“Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative …”

I came home and found a lion in my living room

Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!

Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut

I hurried home to Paterson and stayed two days.

Called up my old Reichian analyst

who’d kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana

‘It’s happened’ I panted ‘There’s a Lion in my room’

‘I’m afraid any discussion would have no value’ he hung up.

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend

I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye

We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow & he kicked me out

I ended masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning ‘Lion.’

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him ‘Lion!’

He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries

I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn Ants

But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom’s bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat

‘I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions

But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father hath no Lion

You said your mother was mad don’t expect me to produce the Monster for your Bridegroom.’

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink in Harlem

Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger

He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear him outside thru the window

My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in deafening stillness

We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur

Waxed rheumy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang greeting.

I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove

boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tub under the sink board.

He didn’t eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.

Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out

enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws

by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares

Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion’s flophouse circus,

I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor—‘Terrible Presence!’ I cried ‘Eat me or die!’

It got up that afternoon—walked to the door with its paw on the wall to steady its trembling body

Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth

thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico

Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice “Not this time Baby—but I will be back again.”

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger

Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the Universe how am I chosen

In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served

Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy.

Paris, March 1958

The Names

Time comes spirit weakens and goes blank apartments shuffled through and forgotten

The dead in their cenotaphs locomotive high schools & African cities small town motorcycle graves

O America what saints given vision are shrouded in junk their elegy a nameless hoodlum elegance leaning against death’s military garage

Huncke who first saw the sun revolve in Chicago survived into middle-age Times Square

Thief stole hearts of wildcat tractor boys arrived to morphine brilliance Bickford table midnight neon to take a fall

arrested 41 times late 40s his acned skin & black Spanish hair grown coy and old and lip bitten in Rikers Island Jail

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