Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 139

—tiny bright statues of Buddha

                    standing,                     blue desert valley haze—

                    cactus lessons in sentience,

Trees like mental carrots—Anaconda

                    smelters white plumesmoke in

                    San Manuel, or Phelps-Dodge

                    in Douglas?—

Yellow’d Creosote bushes in granular

                    dust, hills jeep tracked,

Prairie dogs stand quivering-spined in

                    cactus-shade. A museum,

                    minds in Ashramic City—tweetling

                         bird radios—Hopi Rain:

April 29, 1969

Reflections in Sleepy Eye

For Robert Bly

3,489 friendly people

Elm grove, willow, Blue Earth County’s

               red barns, tiny feoff with

               gas nozzle snout on hillock,

Large beetles & lizards—

                         orange-painted steel

                         cranes & truck cabs,

               Green seeder down-pointed

                         Science Toy earth-cock.

Thin floods, smooth planted acres

                         upturned, brown

               cornstubble plowed under,

               tractor pulling discs over fenced land.

Old box-alder fallen over

               on knees in pond-flood,

white painted gas tanks by

               Springfield’s rail yard woods,

                         tiny train parade by Meats

                         Groceries North Star Seeds

Our Flag at full mast

               TV antennae, large leafy antennaed

                         trees upstretched green,

                         trunks standing sunlit

               Sheep on stormfenced knoll,

                         green little wood acres—

               one forest from Canada to these

               plains—Corn silage in net bins,

                                   Windmills in Tracy,

                         Blue enamel silos cap’d

               aluminum, minarets in white sunbeam.

Cannabis excellent for drying lymph-

               glands, specific relief for

               symptoms of colds, flu,

                         ear pressure grippe &

               Eustachian tube clogging—

A tree, bent broken mid-trunk

                         branches to ground— Much land, few folk, excelsior grave

                                             yard stones

                         silver tipp’d phalloi to heaven—

Aum, Om, Ford, Mailbox

                                   telephone pole wire strung

                                   down road. Lake house

                                   fence poles, tree shade

                                             pine hill grave, Ah

Lake Benton’s blue waved waters—

                         finally, Time came to

                                   the brick barn! collapsed!

Old oak trunk sunk thick

                                             under ground.

Farm car plowman rolling discs,

                                   iron cuts smooth ground even,

                                             hill plains roll—

Cows browse under alder shoot,

               bent limbs arch clear brown

                         stream beds, trees stand

                                   on banks observing

shade, peculiar standing up or kneeling

                              groundward

Car graveyard fills eyes

               iron glitters, chrome fenders

                              rust—

White crosses, Vietnam War Dead

                                   churchbells ring

Cars, kids, hamburger stand

                              open, barn-smile

                                        white eye, door mouth.

May 9, 1969

Independence Day

Orange hawkeye stronger than thought winking above a thousand thin grassblades—

Dr. Hermon busted in Texas for green weed garden-grown

licensed Federal, Municipal-cop-prosecuted natheless—

Sweet chirrup from bush top to bush top, orange wing’d

birds’ scratch-beaked telegraphy signaled to and fro buttercup earlets—

warbles & sweet whistles swifting echo-noted by fly buzz,

jet-roar rolling down thru clouds—

So tiny a grasshopper climbing timothy stub the birds can’t tell they’re there—

intense soft leaf-spears budding symmetric,

breeze bending gentle flowerheads against yarrow their persons—

eyelids heavy, summer heavy with fear, mapletrunks heavy with green leafmass—

closed buds of hawkeye stronger than thought tremble on tall hairy stems.

•

Red shelled bedbugs crawl war sheets,

city garbage spoils wet sidewalks where children play—

A telephone call from Texas tells the latest police-state bust.

O Self tangled in TV wires, white judges and laws

your jet-thunder echoes in clouds, your DDT spread thru firmament waters poisons algae & brown pelican—