Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 19

the back seat of his car

and stood in the square

hymning at the crowd:

“Rock rock rock

for the tension

of the people

of this country

rock rock rock

for the craziness

of the people

of America

tension is a rock

and god will

rock our rock

craziness is a rock

and god will

rock our rock

Lord we shall all

be sweet again.”

He showed his wooden leg

to the boy, saying:

“I promise to drive you

home through America.”

Paterson, April 1952

Wild Orphan

     Blandly mother

takes him strolling

     by railroad and by river

—he’s the son of the absconded

     hot rod angel—

and he imagines cars

     and rides them in his dreams,

so lonely growing up among

     the imaginary automobiles

and dead souls of Tarrytown

     to create

out of his own imagination

     the beauty of his wild

forebears—a mythology

     he cannot inherit.

Will he later hallucinate

     his gods? Waking

among mysteries with

     an insane gleam

of recollection?

     The recognition—

something so rare

     in his soul,

met only in dreams

     —nostalgias

of another life.

A question of the soul.

     And the injured

losing their injury

     in their innocence

—a cock, a cross,

     an excellence of love.

And the father grieves

     in flophouse

complexities of memory

     a thousand miles

away, unknowing

     of the unexpected

youthful stranger

     bumming toward his door.

New York, April 13, 1952

II

THE GREEN

AUTOMOBILE

(1953–1954)

The Green Automobile

If I had a Green Automobile

          I’d go find my old companion

          in his house on the Western ocean.

                    Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I’d honk my horn at his manly gate,

          inside his wife and three

          children sprawl naked

                    on the living room floor.

He’d come running out

          to my car full of heroic beer

          and jump screaming at the wheel

                    for he is the greater driver.

We’d pilgrimage to the highest mount

          of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions

          laughing in each other’s arms,

                    delight surpassing the highest Rockies,

and after old agony, drunk with new years,

          bounding toward the snowy horizon

          blasting the dashboard with original bop

                    hot rod on the mountain

we’d batter up the cloudy highway

          where angels of anxiety

          careen through the trees

                    and scream out of the engine.

We’d burn all night on the jackpine peak

          seen from Denver in the summer dark,

          forestlike unnatural radiance

                    illuminating the mountaintop:

childhood youthtime age & eternity

          would open like sweet trees

          in the nights of another spring

                    and dumbfound us with love,

for we can see together

          the beauty of souls

          hidden like diamonds

                    in the clock of the world,

like Chinese magicians can

          confound the immortals

          with our intellectuality

                    hidden in the mist,

in the Green Automobile

          which I have invented

          imagined and visioned

                    on the roads of the world

more real than the engine

          on a track in the desert

          purer than Greyhound and

                    swifter than physical jetplane.