Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 15

in the wrack and wild love of time.

It’s death that makes man’s life a dream

and heaven’s splendor but a wave;

light that falls into the sea

is swallowed in a starving cave.

Skin may be visionary till the crystal

skull is coaled in aged shade,

but underground the lantern dies,

shroud must rot, and memory fade.

Who talks of Death and Angel now,

great angel darkened out of grace?

The shroud enfolds your radiant doom,

the silent Parcae change the race,

while the man of the apocalypse

shall with his wrath lie ever wed

until the sexless womb bear love,

and the grave be weary of the dead,

tragical master broken down

into a self-embodied tomb,

blinded by the sight of death,

and woven in the darkened loom.

Paterson, September 1950

Ode: My 24th Year

Now I have become a man

and know no more than mankind can

and groan with nature’s every groan,

transcending child’s blind skeleton

and all childish divinity,

while loomed in consanguinity

the weaving of the shroud goes on.

No two things alike; and yet

first memory dies, then I forget

one carnal thought that made thought grim:

but that has sunk below time’s rim

and wonder ageing into woe

later dayes more fatal show:

Time gets thicker, light gets dim.

And I a second Time am blind,

all starlight dimmed out of the mind

that was first candle to the morn,

and candelabra turned to thorn.

All is dream till morn has rayed

the Rose of night back into shade,

Messiah firmament reborn.

Now I cannot go be wild

or harken back to shape of child

chrystal born into the aire

circled by the harte and bear

and agelesse in a greene arcade,

for he is down in Granite laid,

or standing on a Granite stair.

No return, where thought’s completed;

let that ghost’s last gaze go cheated:

I may waste my days no more

pining in spirituall warre.

Where am I in wilderness?

What creature bore my bones to this?

Here is no Eden: this is my store.

September 1950–1951

How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory

Chorus of Working Girls

There was this character come in

to pick up all the broken threads

and tie them back into the loom.

He thought that what he didn’t know

would do as well as well did, tying

threads together with real small knots.

So there he was shivering in his shoes,

showing his wish to be a god of all the knots

we tended after suffering to learn them up.

But years ago we were employed by Mr. Smith

to tie these knots which it took us all

of six months to perfect. However he showed

no sign of progress learning how after five

weeks of frigid circumstances of his own

making which we made sure he didn’t break

out of by freezing up on him. Obviously

he wasn’t a real man anyway but a goop.

New York, Late 1950

The Archetype Poem

Joe Blow has decided

he will no longer

     be a fairy.

He involves himself

in various snatches

     and then hits

a nut named Mary.

He gets in bed with her

     and performs

as what in his mind

would be his usual

     okay job,

which should be solid

     as a rock

     but isn’t.

What goes wrong here?

     he says

to himself. I want

     to take her

but she doesn’t want

     to take me.

I thought I was

     giving her * * *

and she was giving

     me a man’s

position in the world.

Now suddenly she lays

     down the law.

I’m very tired, she says,

     please go.

Is this it? he thinks.

     I didn’t want it

to come to that but

I’ve got to get out

     of this situation.

     So the question

resolves itself: do

     you settle for her