Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen (книги серии онлайн .TXT) 📗
O future, unimaginable God.
Finca Tacalapan de San
Leandro, Palenque,
Chiapas, Mexico 1954–San Francisco 1955
II
Jump in time
to the immediate future,
another poem:
return to the old land
penniless and with
a disconnected manuscript,
the recollection of a few
sensations, beginning:
logboat down Rio Michol
under plantain
and drifting trees
to the railroad,
darkness on the sea
looking toward the stations
of the classic world—
another image descending
in white mist
down the lunar highway
at dawn, above
Lake Catemaco on the bus
—it woke me up—
the far away likeness
of a heavenly file
of female saints
stepping upward
on miniature arches
of a gold stairway
into the starry sky,
the thousands of little
saintesses in blue hoods
looking out at me
and beckoning:
SALVATION!
It’s true,
simple as in the image.
Then the mummies
in their Pantheon
at Guanajuato—
a city of Cortesian
mines in the first
crevasse of the Sierras,
where I rested—
for I longed to see their
faces before I left:
these weren’t mythical rock
images, tho stone
—limestone effigies out
of the grave, remains
of the fatal character—
newly resurrected,
grasping their bodies
with stiff arms, in soiled
funeral clothes;
twisted, knock-kneed,
like burning
screaming lawyers—
what hallucinations
of the nerves?—
indecipherable-sexed;
one death-man had
raised up his arms
to cover his eyes,
significant timeless
reflex in sepulchre:
apparitions of immortality
consumed inward,
waiting openmouthed
in the fireless darkness.
Nearby, stacked symmetrically,
a skullbone wall ending
the whitewashed corridor
under the graveyard
—foetid smell reminiscent
of sperm and drunkenness—
the skulls empty and fragile,
numerous as shells,
—so much life passed through
this town …
The problem is isolation
—there in the grave
or here in oblivion of light.
Of eternity we have
a numbered score of years
and fewer tender moments
—one moment of tenderness
and a year of intelligence
and nerves: one moment of pure
bodily tenderness—
I could dismiss Allen with grim
pleasure.
Reminder: I knelt in my room
on the patio at San Miguel
at the keyhole: 2 A.M.
The old woman lit a candle.
Two young men and their girls
waited before the portal,
news from the street. She
changed the linen, smiling.
What joy! The nakedness!
They dance! They talk
and simper before the door,
they lean on a leg,
hand on a hip, and posture,
nudity in their hearts,
they clap a hand to head
and whirl and enter,
pushing each other,
happily, happily,
to a moment of love… .
What solitude I’ve
finally inherited.
Afterward fifteen hours
on rubbled single lane,
broken bus rocking along
the maws and continental crags