Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 21

and dreaming, in the absence

          of electricity …

over and over eating the low root

          of the asphodel,

gray fate …

          rolling in generation

on the flowery couch

          as on a bank in Arden—

my only rose tonite’s the treat

          of my own nudity.

Fall 1953

My Alba

Now that I’ve wasted

five years in Manhattan

life decaying

talent a blank

talking disconnected

patient and mental

sliderule and number

machine on a desk

autographed triplicate

synopsis and taxes

obedient prompt

poorly paid

stayed on the market

youth of my twenties

fainted in offices

wept on typewriters

deceived multitudes

in vast conspiracies

deodorant battleships

serious business industry

every six weeks whoever

drank my blood bank

innocent evil now

part of my system

five years unhappy labor

22 to 27 working

not a dime in the bank

to show for it anyway

dawn breaks it’s only the sun

the East smokes O my bedroom

I am damned to Hell what

alarmclock is ringing

New York, 1953

Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain

Liang Kai, Southern Sung

He drags his bare feet

          out of a cave

                    under a tree,

eyebrows

          grown long with weeping

                    and hooknosed woe,

in ragged soft robes

          wearing a fine beard,

                    unhappy hands

clasped to his naked breast—

          humility is beatness

                    humility is beatness—

faltering

          into the bushes by a stream,

                    all things inanimate

but his intelligence—

          stands upright there

                    tho trembling:

Arhat

          who sought Heaven

                    under a mountain of stone,

sat thinking

          till he realized

                    the land of blessedness exists

in the imagination—

          the flash come:

                    empty mirror—

how painful to be born again

          wearing a fine beard,

                    reentering the world

a bitter wreck of a sage:

          earth before him his only path.

                    We can see his soul,

he knows nothing

          like a god:

                    shaken

meek wretch—

          humility is beatness

                    before the absolute World.

New York Public Library, 1953

Havana 1953

I

The night cafe—4 A.M.

     Cuba Libre 20c:

          white tiled squares,

triangular neon lights,

     long wooden bar on one side,

          a great delicatessen booth

on the other facing the street.

     In the center

          among the great city midnight drinkers,

by Aldama Palace

     on Gomez corner,

          white men and women

with standing drums,

     mariachis, voices, guitars—

          drumming on tables,

knives on bottles,

     banging on the floor

          and on each other,

with wooden clacks,

     whistling, howling,

          fat women in strapless silk.

Cop talking to the fat-nosed girl

     in a flashy black dress.

          In walks a weird Cezanne

vision of the nowhere hip Cuban:

     tall, thin, check gray suit,

          gray felt shoes,

blaring gambler’s hat,

     Cab Calloway pimp’s mustachio

          —it comes down to a point in the center—

rushing up generations late talking Cuban,

     pointing a gold-ringed finger

          up toward the yellowed ceiling,

other cigarette hand pointing