Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 125

Willow Hill, Willow hill, Cannon Fodder, Cannon fodder—

And the Children of the Warmakers’re exempt from fighting

                    their parents’ war—

Those with intellectual money capacities who go to college

                         till 1967—

Slowly the radio war news

               steals o’er the senses—

      Negro photographs in Rochester

                    ax murders in Cleveland,

      Anger at heart base

               all over the Nation—

Husbands ready to murder their wives

          at the drop of a hat-statistic

      I could take an ax and split Peter’s skull with pleasure—

Great trucks crawl up road

               insect-lit with yellow bulbs outside Pittsburgh,

          “The Devil with Blue Dress” exudes over radio,

          car headlights gleam on motel signs in blackness,

               Satanic Selfs covering nature

                         spiked with trees.

Crash of machineguns, ring of locusts, airplane roar,

                    calliope yell, bzzzs.

January 4, 1967

An Open Window on Chicago

Midwinter night,

      Clark & Halstead brushed with this week’s snow

      grill lights blinking at the corner

                    decades ago

      Smokestack poked above roofs & watertower

          standing still above the blue

                    lamped boulevards,

          sky blacker than th’ east

          for all the steel smoke

                    settled in heaven from South.

Downtown—like Batman’s Gotham City

               battleshipped with Lights,

          towers winking under clouds,

               police cars blinking on Avenues,

               space above city misted w/fine soot

cars crawling past redlites down Avenue,

                    exuding white wintersmoke—

Eat Eat said the sign, so I went in the Spanish Diner

The girl at the counter, whose yellow Bouffant roots

               grew black over her pinch’d face,

               spooned her coffee with knuckles

                    puncture-marked,

               whose midnight wrists had needletracks,

                    scars inside her arms:

               “Wanna go get a Hotel Room with me?”

                         The Heroin Whore

thirty years ago come haunting Chicago’s midnite streets,

      me come here so late with my beard!

Corner Grill-lights blink, police car turned

      & took away its load of bum to jail,

          black uniforms patrolling streets

      where suffering

          lifts a hand palsied by Parkinson’s Disease

                         to beg a cigarette.

The psychiatrist came visiting this Hotel 12th floor—

      Where does the Anger come from?

      Outside! Radio messages, images on Television,

                    Electric Networks spread

      fear of murder on the streets—

          “Communications Media”

inflict the Vietnam War & its anxiety on every private skin

      in hotel room or bus—

Sitting, meditating quietly on Great Space outside—

Bleep Bleep dit dat dit radio on, Television

                    murmuring,

      bombshells crash on flesh

          his flesh my flesh all the same.—

The Dakini in the hotel room turns in her sleep

                    while War news flashes thru Aether—

      Shouts at streetcorners as bums

                    crawl in the metal policevan.

And there’s a tiny church in middle Chicago

                         with its black spike to the black air

And there’s the new Utensil Towers round on horizon.

And there’s red glow of Central Neon

                         on hushed building walls at 4 A.M.,

And there’s proud Lights & Towers of Man’s Central City

      looking pathetic at 4 A.M., traveler passing through,

      staring outa hotel window under Heaven—

Is this tiny city the best we can do?

      These tiny reptilian towers

          so proud of their Executives

      they haveta build a big sign in middle downtown

                         to Advertise

      old Connor’s Insurance sign fading on brick

                         building side—

      Snow on deserted roofs & parkinglots—

      Hog Butcher to the World!?

      Taxi-Harmonious Modernity grown rusty-old—

The prettiness of Existence! To sit at the window

      & moan over Chicago’s stone & brick