Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 6

But merry, mad and free

My love was. Look! yet come love hath.

Is this not great gentility?

I only remembered the ocean’s roll,

And islands that I passed,

And, in a vision of death and dread,

A city where my soul

Visited its vast

Passage of the dead.

My love’s eternity

I never entered, when, at last

“I blush with love for thee,”

My love, renewed in anger, said.

Is this not great gentility?

Over the road in an automobile

Rode I and my gentle love.

The traffic on our way was wild;

My love was at the wheel,

And in and out we drove.

My own eyes were mild.

How my love merrily

Dared the other cars to rove:

“But if they stop for me,

Why, then, I stop for them, my child.”

Is this not great gentility?

East Harlem, July 1948

The Voice of Rock

I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep

until a victim is resigned;

a shadow holds me in his keep

and seeks the bones that he must find;

and hoveled in a shroudy heap

dead eyes see, and dead eyes weep,

dead men from the coffin creep,

nightmare of murder in the mind.

Murder has the ghost of shame

that lies abed with me in dirt

and mouths the matter of my fame.

With voice of rock, and rock engirt,

a shadow cries out in my name;

he struggles for my writhing frame;

my death and his were not the same,

what wounds have I that he is hurt?

This is such murder that my own

incorporeal blood is shed,

but shadow changes into bone,

and thoughts are doubled in my head;

for what he knows and I have known

is, like a crystal lost in stone,

hidden in skin and buried down,

blind as the vision of the dead.

Paterson, August 1948

Refrain

The air is dark, the night is sad,

I lie sleepless and I groan.

Nobody cares when a man goes mad:

He is sorry, God is glad.

Shadow changes into bone.

Every shadow has a name;

When I think of mine I moan,

I hear rumors of such fame.

Not for pride, but only shame,

Shadow changes into bone.

When I blush I weep for joy,

And laughter drops from me like stone:

The aging laughter of the boy

To see the ageless dead so coy.

Shadow changes into bone.

Paterson, August 1948

A Western Ballad

Copyright © 1972 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

A Western Ballad

When I died, love, when I died

my heart was broken in your care;

I never suffered love so fair

as now I suffer and abide

when I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died

I wearied in an endless maze

that men have walked for centuries,

as endless as the gate was wide

when I died, love, when I died.

When I died, love, when I died

there was a war in the upper air:

all that happens, happens there;

there was an angel at my side

when I died, love, when I died.

Paterson, August 1948

The Trembling of the Veil

Today out of the window

the trees seemed like live

organisms on the moon.

Each bough extended upward

covered at the north end

with leaves, like a green

hairy protuberance. I saw

the scarlet-and-pink shoot-tips

of budding leaves wave

delicately in the sunlight,

blown by the breeze,

all the arms of the trees

bending and straining downward

at once when the wind

pushed them.

Paterson, August 1948

A Meaningless Institution

I was given my bedding, and a bunk

in an enormous ward,

surrounded by hundreds of weeping,

decaying men and women.

I sat on my bunk, three tiers up

next to the ceiling,

looking down the gray aisles.

Old, crippled, dumb people were

bent over sewing. A heavy girl

in a dirty dress

stared at me. I waited

for an official guide to come

and give me instructions.