Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen (книги серии онлайн .TXT) 📗
we dream again of Heaven.
For the world is a mountain
of shit: if it’s going to
be moved at all, it’s got
to be taken by handfuls.
c.
Man lives like the unhappy
whore on River Street who
in her Eternity gets only
a couple of bucks and a lot
of snide remarks in return
for seeking physical love
the best way she knows how,
never really heard of a glad
job or joyous marriage or
a difference in the heart:
or thinks it isn’t for her,
which is her worst misery.
Paterson, Spring 1950
The Night-Apple
Last night I dreamed
of one I loved
for seven long years,
but I saw no face,
only the familiar
presence of the body:
sweat skin eyes
feces urine sperm
saliva all one
odor and mortal taste.
Paterson, Spring 1950
Cezanne’s Ports
In the foreground we see time and life
swept in a race
toward the left hand side of the picture
where shore meets shore.
But that meeting place
isn’t represented;
it doesn’t occur on the canvas.
For the other side of the bay
is Heaven and Eternity,
with a bleak white haze over its mountains.
And the immense water of L’Estaque is a go-between
for minute rowboats.
Paterson, Summer 1950
The Blue Angel
Marlene Dietrich is singing a lament
for mechanical love.
She leans against a mortarboard tree
on a plateau by the seashore.
She’s a life-sized toy,
the doll of eternity;
her hair is shaped like an abstract hat
made out of white steel.
Her face is powdered, whitewashed and
immobile like a robot.
Jutting out of her temple, by an eye,
is a little white key.
She gazes through dull blue pupils
set in the whites of her eyes.
She closes them, and the key
turns by itself.
She opens her eyes, and they’re blank
like a statue’s in a museum.
Her machine begins to move, the key turns
again, her eyes change, she sings
—you’d think I would have thought a plan
to end the inner grind,
but not till I have found a man
to occupy my mind.
Dream, Paterson, Mid-1950
Two Boys Went Into a Dream Diner
and ate so much the bill was five dollars,
but they had no idea
what they were getting themselves into,
so they shoveled
garbage into a truck in the alley
to make up for the food.
After about five minutes, wondering
how long they would have
to work off what it cost, they asked
the diner owner when
their penance or pay would be over.
He laughed.
Little did they realize—they were
so virginal—
that a grown worker works half a day
for money like that.
Paterson, Mid-1950
A Desolation
Now mind is clear
as a cloudless sky.
Time then to make a
home in wilderness.
What have I done but
wander with my eyes
in the trees? So I
will build: wife,
family, and seek
for neighbors.
Or I
perish of lonesomeness
or want of food or
lightning or the bear
(must tame the hart
and wear the bear).
And maybe make an image
of my wandering, a little
image—shrine by the
roadside to signify
to traveler that I live
here in the wilderness
awake and at home.
Paterson, Mid-1950
In Memoriam: William Cannastra, 1922–1950
He cast off all his golden robes
and lay down sleeping in the night,
and in a dream he saw three fates
at a machine in a shroud of light.
He yelled “I wait the end of Time;
be with me, shroud, now, in my wrath!
There is a lantern in my grave,
who hath that lantern all light hath.”
Alas! The prophet of this dream
is sunken in the dumbing clime:
much is finished, much forgotten
