Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 88
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Like the prow of a Queen Mary the curved building
sign Players package, blue capped center
Navvy encircled by his life-belt a sweet bearded
profile against 19th century sea waves—
last a giant red delicious Coca-Cola signature
covers half the building back to gold Cathay.
Cars stop three abreast for the light, race forward,
turtleneck youths jump the fence toward Boots,
the night-gang in Mod slacks and ties sip
coffee at the Snac-A-Matic corner opendoor,
a boy leaned under Cartoon Cinema lifts hand
puffs white smoke and waits agaze—a wakened
pigeon flutters down from streetlamp to the fountain,
primly walks and pecks the empty pave—now deep
blue planet-light dawns in Piccadilly’s low sky.
June 12, 1965
Portland Coliseum
A brown piano in diamond
white spotlight
Leviathan auditorium
iron rib wired
hanging organs, vox
black battery
A single whistling sound of
ten thousand children’s
larynxes asinging
pierce the ears
and flowing up the belly
bliss the moment arrived
Apparition, four brown English
jacket christhair boys
Goofed Ringo battling bright
white drums
Silent George hair patient
Soul horse
Short black-skulled Paul
wit thin guitar
Lennon the Captain, his mouth
a triangular smile,
all jump together to End
some tearful memory song
ancient two years,
The million children
the thousand worlds
bounce in their seats, bash
each other’s sides, press
legs together nervous
Scream again & claphand
become one Animal
in the New World Auditorium
—hands waving myriad
snakes of thought
screech beyond hearing
while a line of police with
folded arms stands
Sentry to contain the red
sweatered ecstasy
that rises upward to the
wired roof.
August 27, 1965
VIII
THE FALL OF AMERICA
(1965–1971)
Thru the Vortex West Coast to East (1965–1966)
Zigzag Back Thru These States (1966–1967)
Elegies for Neal Cassady (1968)
Ecologues of These States (1969–1971)
Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971)
Thru the Vortex West Coast to East
(1965–1966)
Beginning of a Poem of These States
Memento for Gary Snyder
Under the bluffs of Oroville, blue cloud September skies, entering U.S. border, red red apples bend their tree boughs propt with sticks—
At Omak a fat girl in dungarees leads her big brown horse by asphalt highway.
Thru lodgepole pine hills Coleville near Moses Mountain—a white horse standing back of a 2 ton truck moving forward between trees.
At Nespelem, in the yellow sun, a marker for Chief Joseph’s grave under rilled brown hills—white cross over highway.
At Grand Coulee under leaden sky, giant red generators humm thru granite & concrete to materialize onions—
And gray water laps against the gray sides of Steamboat Mesa.
At Dry Falls 40 Niagaras stand silent & invisible, tiny horses graze
on the rusty canyon’s mesquite floor.
At Mesa, on the car radio passing a new corn silo, Walking Boogie teenager’s tender throats, “I wish they could all be California girls”—as black highway curls outward.
On plains toward Pasco, Oregon hills at horizon, Bob Dylan’s voice on airways, mass machine-made folksong of one soul—Please crawl out your window—first time heard.
Speeding thru space, Radio the soul of the nation. The Eve of Destruction and The Universal Soldier.
And tasted the Snake: water from Yellowstone under a green bridge; darshana with the Columbia, oilslick & small bird feathers on mud shore. Across the river, silver bubbles of refineries.
There Lewis and Clark floated down in a raft: the brown-mesa’d gorge of Lake Wallula smelling of rain in the sage, Greyhound buses speeding by.
Searching neither for Northwest Passage, nor Gold, nor the Prophet who will save the polluted Nation, nor for Guru walking the silver waters behind McNary Dam.
Roundup time in Pendleton, pinched women’s faces and hulking cowboy hats in the tavern, I’m a city slicker from Benares. Barman murmurs to himself, two hands full of beer, “Who wanted that?”
Heavy rain at twilight, trumpets massing & ascending repeat The Eve of Destruction, Georgia Pacific sawmill burners lift smoke thru the dusky valley.
Cold night in Blue Mountains, snow-powdered tops of droopy Tamarack and Fir at gray sunrise, coffee frozen in brown coffeepot, toes chilled in Czechoslovakian tennis sneakers.
Under Ponderosa pine, this place for sale—45th Parallel, half way between equator and North Pole—Tri-City Radio broadcasting clear skies & freezing nite temperatures; big yellow daisies, hay bales piled in square stacks house-high.
“Don Carpenter has a real geologist’s hammer, he can hit a rock & split it open & look inside & utter some mantra.”
Coyote jumping in front of the truck, & down bank, jumping thru river, running up field to wooded hillside, stopped on a bound & turned round to stare at us—Oh-Ow! shook himself and bounded away waving his bushy tail.
Rifles & cyanide bombs unavailing—he looked real surprised & pointed his thin nose in our direction. Hari Om Namo Shivaye!
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