Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 154

(1972–1974)

Ayers Rock / Uluru Song

When the red pond fills fish appear

When the red pond dries fish disappear.

Everything built on the desert crumbles to dust.

Electric cable transmission wires swept down.

The lizard people came out of the rock.

The red Kangaroo people forgot their own song.

Only a man with four sticks can cross the Simpson Desert.

One rain turns red dust green with leaves.

One raindrop begins the universe.

When the raindrop dries, worlds come to their end.

Central Australia, March 23, 1972

Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling”

Must be thousands of sweet gourmets rustling through

leaf crowded branches, thrushes cracking seedling shells

all over America like crystalline carillon bells,

a really strange silent tingling.

Silent carillons, not to celebrate Main Street

but rustling up some food their only scene—

No miracle but millions of hungry souls

silently tingling.

This tingling silence heralds

an orgy of hermit thrushes eating

like thousands of song-men’s clapsticks clacking

or faraway Moscow’s million bells

—some dream collective—generational vogue.

Thrush communes don’t be afraid of the big Broom,

your flock continues an ancient tradition,

now all over America—collective marriage;

though some detractors put down your in-group, not big enough!

A silent Individualist in top hat & tails drest

coffinlike denounces your collective struggles in bed—

but his own wife wears rings on every finger,

as if she wound up in a group marriage.

This gentle gang’s only enemy’s insects,

Cleaning up bark parasites—silently, silently—

Anybody can crush bones and oink louder

but cant beat this silent tingling.

Fast New York Sydney chicks—

thanks Brisbane birds & Chicago thrushes

for your own silent tingling—your cities’ trees’

leaves tremble like golden curlicues on Byzantine crosses.

Maybe someday our descendants

’ll ask about this poet—What’d he sing about?

I didn’t ring Halleluiah bells, I didn’t clank leg-irons,

I was silently tingling.

Translated with Andrei Voznesensky

Darwin Land—Cairns, Australia, March 26–29, 1972

These States: to Miami Presidential Convention

I

Philadelphia city lights boiling under the clouds

green Babylon’s heat attracting rain,

          lightning, smoke gathered

     about the excited city—shouts, vibration

          of trucks, radio antennae, streets’

solid electric glitter under sulphur waterfumes—

the plane glides to Miami Beach over Atlantic’s

          Coast metropolis

     red downtown sores of theater money,

          bar sign pinprick bulbs under

               Cloud curtain’d sunlit velvet horizon

To the political drama, march to

          Auditorium thru tacky downtown

          Cuban neons blinking angry language,

     Yippies survived unto this Presidentiad!

Woe to the States, whoever’s the empty President

          Nixon McGovern X or Caesar

Must decree end to matter habit,

     America swallowing aluminum sleep pills

Cries of millions of trees travel thru TV

          loudspeakers to the Athletic Club’s basement steamroom—

          Millions of yellow faces call thru radio

Cries of the longhairs in the Rockies,

          Choruses of American prophets in their graves

     echo thru newspaper horns to the

                    Ear Consciousness Mind

Matter Consumption must end,

          Dirty alchemy destroys the House—

     Billion year old leaf plates become inert matter

          Plastic particles mixed

                         with living cells in the Walleyed

                              pike’s retina—

Soaring over Atlantic’s lit-up electric

                    houses to the politics Warre

Ah! Shall be my mantra—America’s gasp of Awe—

     Ah as Fireworks ascend & light glitters

          faery shimmering in treetop darkness

               sky over Eastside Park July 4th—Ah

As the enlightened Aborigine sighs his

     soul-journey with birds to New Guinea

Ah! the madman screamed

          to himself in the silence of the Ward

Ah as car owner collapsed into

          his ruined heap of metal on his own

               Front Yard

Ah! the divorcee steps off her plane onto Mexico City Airport—

Ah! as I ride spitting petrol into the exquisite

                              Midnight Atmosphere