Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 25

with eyes shut to

          where they crawled

like ants on brown old temples

          building their minute ruins

and disappearing into the wild

          leaving many mysteries

of deathly volition

          to be divined.

I alone know the great crystal door

          to the House of Night,

a legend of centuries

          —I and a few Indians.

And had I mules and money I could find

          the Cave of Amber

and the Cave of Gold

          rumored of the cliffs of Tumbala.

I found the face of one

          of the Nine Guardians of the Night

hidden in a mahogany hut

          in the Area of Lost Souls

—first relic of kind for that place.

And I found as well a green leaf

          shaped like a human heart;

but to whom shall I send this

          anachronistic valentine?

Yet these ruins so much

          woke me to nostalgia

for the classic stations

          of the earth,

the ancient continent

          I have not seen

and the few years

          of memory left

before the ultimate night

          of war—

As if these ruins were not enough,

          as if man could go

no further before heaven

          till he exhausted

the physical round

          of his own mortality

in the obscure cities

          hidden in the aging world

… the few actual

          ecstatic conscious souls

certain to be found,

          familiars …

returning after years

          to my own scene

transfigured:

          to hurry change

to hurry the years

          bring me to my fate.

So I dream nightly of an embarkation,

          captains, captains,

iron passageways, cabin lights,

          Brooklyn across the waters,

the great dull boat, visitors, farewells,

          the blurred vast sea—

one trip a lifetime’s loss or gain:

as Europe is my own imagination

          —many shall see her,

          many shall not—

though it’s only the old familiar world

and not some abstract mystical dream.

And in a moment of previsioning sleep

          I see that continent in rain,

black streets, old night, a

          fading monument…

And a long journey unaccomplished

          yet, on antique seas

rolling in gray barren dunes under

          the world’s waste of light

toward ports of childish geography

          the rusty ship will

harbor in …

What nights might I not see

          penniless among the Arab

mysteries of dirty towns around

          the casbahs of the docks?

Clay paths, mud walls,

          the smell of green cigarettes,

creosote and rank salt water—

          dark structures overhead,

shapes of machinery and facade

          of hull: and a bar lamp

burning in the wooden shack

          across from the dim

mountain of sulphur on the pier.

          Toward what city

will I travel? What wild houses

          do I go to occupy?

What vagrant rooms and streets

          and lights in the long night

urge my expectation? What genius

          of sensation in ancient

halls? what jazz beyond jazz

          in future blue saloons?

what love in the cafes of God?

I thought, five years ago

          sitting in my apartment,

my eyes were opened for an hour

          seeing in dreadful ecstasy

the motionless buildings

          of New York rotting

under the tides of Heaven.

There is a god

dying in America

already created

in the imagination of men

made palpable

for adoration:

there is an inner

anterior image

of divinity

beckoning me out

to pilgrimage.