Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 191

Is a mirror image of Russia’s red Babel-Tower

Jesus Christ was spotless but was Crucified by the Mob

Law & Order Herod’s hired soldiers did the job

Flowerpower’s fine but innocence has got no Protection

The man who shot John Lennon had a Hero-worshipper’s connection

The moral of this song is that the world is in a horrible place

Scientific Industry devours the human race

Police in every country armed with Tear Gas & TV

Secret Masters everywhere bureaucratize for you & me

Terrorists and police together build a lowerclass Rage

Propaganda murder manipulates the upperclass Stage

Can’t tell the difference ’tween a turkey & a provocateur

If you’re feeling confused the Government’s in there for sure

Aware Aware wherever you are No Fear

Trust your heart Don’t ride your Paranoia dear

Breathe together with an ordinary mind

Armed with Humor Feed & Help Enlighten Woe Mankind

Frankfurt-New York, December 15, 1980

APPENDIX

Notes

Epigraphs from Original Editions

Dedications

Acknowledgments

Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror

Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Howl

Author’s Cover Writ

Index of Proper Names

Notes

Notes were composed 1961–1984 in collaboration with Fernanda Pivano, Italian translator; Jean-Jacques Lebel, Mary Beach and Claude Pelieu, Gerard-Georges Lemaire and Philippe Mikriammos, French translators; as well as Carl Weissner, Heiner Bastien, Bernd Samland, Jurgen Schmidt and Michael Kellner, German translators. Ever-patient confidante, guide, adviser and scholar Fernanda Pivano has borne the burden of pioneer interpretation of American personal and ephemeral references in these texts to her Italian readers, and other translators, for almost a quarter century. Musician-poet Steven Taylor integrated notes from four languages. The author edited and expanded the work through Summer 1984. Poet Philip Whalen, Sensei, aided interpretation of Buddhist terminology.

A.G.

I

EMPTY MIRROR: GATES OF WRATH

(1947–1952)

The four poems that follow, dedicated to Neal Cassady in the first years of our friendship, were set among “Earlier Poems: 1947,” appended to Gates of Wrath, a book of rhymed verse. These compositions, college imitations of Marlowe, Marvell and Donne (and Hart Crane), are now relocated among these notes. Subsequent poems of Summer 1948, also imitative in style, are placed with the main body of the collection because they deal with primary visionary experience.

A FURTHER PROPOSAL

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will some old pleasures prove.

Men like me have paid in verse

This costly courtesy, or curse;

But I would bargain with my art

(As to the mind, now to the heart),

My symbols, images, and signs

Please me more outside these lines.

For your share and recompense,

You will be taught another sense:

The wisdom of the subtle worm

Will turn most perfect in your form.

Not that your soul need tutored be

By intellectual decree,

But graces that the mind can share

Will make you, as more wise, more fair,

Till all the world’s devoted thought

Find all in you it ever sought,

And even I, of skeptic mind,

A Resurrection of a kind.

This compliment, in my own way,

For what I would receive, I pay;

Thus all the wise have writ thereof,

And all the fair have been their love.

1947

A LOVER’S GARDEN

How vainly lovers marvel, all

To make a body, mind, and soul,

Who, winning one white night of grace,

Will weep and rage a year of days,

Or muse forever on a kiss,

If won by a more sad mistress—

Are all these lovers, then, undone

By him and me, who love alone?

O, have the virtues of the mind

Been all for this one love designed?

As seconds on the clock do move,

Each marks another thought of love;

Thought follows thought, and we devise

Each minute to antithesize,

Till, as the hour chimes its tune,

Dialectic, we commune.

The argument our minds create

We do, abed, substantiate;

Nor we disdain, in our delight,

To flatter the old Stagirite:

For in one speedy moment, we

Endure the whole Eternity,

And in our darkened shapes have found

The greater world that we surround.

In this community, the soul

Doth make its act impersonal,

As, locked in a mechanic bliss,

It shudders into nothingness—

Three characters of each may die

To dramatize that Unity.

Timed, placed, and acting thus, the while,

We sit and sing, and sing and smile.

What life is this? What pleasure mine!

Such as no image can insign:

Nor sweet music, understood,

Soft at night, in solitude