Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 225

an old girlfriend take my picture, give me a bed—

A college to be kicked out Columbia

scandal jail the clang of Iron madhouse to wake my 22’d year

Invented all these companions, wept & prayed them into flesh

needed these Creatures to be Allen Ginsberg this my self

crying the world awake mid oceans of suffering blood

needed to be the liar of Existence in America

Manslaughter showed me the True Falsehood of Law

Needed a Buddha enlightened I be enlightened

a bed to sleep in, a grave to cover my ashes.

October 1, 1983

White Shroud

I am summoned from my bed

To the Great City of the Dead

Where I have no house or home

But in dreams may sometime roam

Looking for my ancient room

A feeling in my heart of doom,

Where Grandmother aged lies

In her couch of later days

And my mother saner than I

Laughs and cries She’s still alive.

I found myself again in the Great Eastern Metropolis,

wandering under Elevated Transport’s iron struts—

many-windowed apartments walled the crowded Bronx road-way

under old theater roofs, masses of poor women shopping

in black shawls past candy store news stands, children skipped beside

grandfathers bent tottering on their canes. I’d descended

to this same street from blackened subways Sundays long ago,

tea and lox with my aunt and dentist cousin when I was ten.

The living pacifist David Dellinger walked at my right side,

he’d driven from Vermont to visit Catholic Worker

Tivoli Farm, we rode up North Manhattan in his car,

relieved the U.S. wars were over in the newspaper,

Television’s frenzied dance of dots & shadows calmed—Now

older than our shouts and banners, we explored brick avenues

we lived in to find new residences, rent loft offices

or roomy apartments, retire our eyes & ears & thoughts.

Surprised, I passed the open Chamber where my Russian Jewish

Grandmother lay in her bed and sighed eating a little Chicken

soup or borscht, potato latkes, crumbs on her blankets, talking

Yiddish, complaining solitude abandoned in Old Folks House.

I realized I could find a place to sleep in the neighborhood, what

relief, the family together again, first time in decades!—

Now vigorous Middle aged I climbed hillside streets in West Bronx

looking for my own hot-water furnished flat to settle in,

close to visit my grandmother, read Sunday newspapers

in vast glassy Cafeterias, smoke over pencils & paper,

poetry desk, happy with books father’d left in the attic,

peaceful encyclopedia and a radio in the kitchen.

An old black janitor swept the gutter, street dogs sniffed red hydrants,

nurses pushed baby carriages past silent house fronts.

Anxious I be settled with money in my own place before

nightfall, I wandered tenement embankments overlooking

the pillared subway trestles by the bridge crossing Bronx River.

How like Paris or Budapest suburbs, far from Centrum

Left Bank junky doorstep tragedy intellectual fights

in restaurant bars, where a spry old lady carried her

Century Universal View camera to record Works

Progress Administration newspaper metropolis

double-decker buses in September sun near Broadway El,

skyscraper roofs upreared ten thousand office windows shining

electric-lit above tiny taxis street lamp’d in Mid-town

avenues’ late-afternoon darkness the day before Christmas,

Herald Square crowds thronged past traffic lights July noon to lunch

Shop under Macy’s department store awnings for dry goods

pause with satchels at Frankfurter counters wearing stylish straw

hats of the decade, mankind thriving in their solitudes in shoes.

But I’d strayed too long amused in the picture cavalcade,

Where was I living? I remembered looking for a house

& eating in apartment kitchens, bookshelf decades ago, Aunt

Rose’s illness, an appendix operation, teeth braces,

one afternoon fitting eyeglasses first time, combing wet hair

back on my skull, young awkward looking in the high school mirror

photograph. The Dead look for a home, but here I was still alive.

     I walked past a niche between buildings with tin canopy

shelter from cold rain warmed by hot exhaust from subway gratings,

beneath which engines throbbed with pleasant quiet drone.

A shopping-bag lady lived in the side alley on a mattress,

her wooden bed above the pavement, many blankets and sheets,

Pots, pans, and plates beside her, fan, electric stove by the wall.

She looked desolate, white haired, but strong enough to cook and stare.

Passersby ignored her buildingside hovel many years,

a few businessmen stopped to speak, or give her bread or yogurt.

Sometimes she disappeared into state hospital back wards,

but now’d returned to her homely alleyway, sharp eyed, old

Cranky hair, half paralyzed, complaining angry as I passed.

I was horrified a little, who’d take care of such a woman,

familiar, half-neglected on her street except she’d weathered

many snows stubborn alone in her motheaten rabbit-fur hat.