Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 7

After awhile, I wandered

off down empty corridors

in search of a toilet.

Dream, Paterson, Fall 1948

A Mad Gleam

Go back to Egypt and the Greeks,

Where the Wizard understood

The spectre haunted where man seeks

And spoke to ghosts that stood in blood.

Go back, go back to the old legend;

The soul remembers, and is true:

What has been most and least imagined,

No other, there is nothing new.

The giant Phantom is ascending

Toward its coronation, gowned

With music unheard, but unending:

Follow the flower to the ground.

New York, January 1949

Complaint of the Skeleton to Time

Take my love, it is not true,

So let it tempt no body new;

Take my lady, she will sigh

For my bed where’er I lie;

Take them, said the skeleton,

But leave my bones alone.

Take my raiment, now grown cold,

To give to some poor poet old;

Take the skin that hoods this truth

If his age would wear my youth;

Take them, said the skeleton,

But leave my bones alone.

Take the thoughts that like the wind

Blow my body out of mind;

Take this heart to go with that

And pass it on from rat to rat;

Take them, said the skeleton,

But leave my bones alone.

Take the art which I bemoan

In a poem’s crazy tone;

Grind me down, though I may groan,

To the starkest stick and stone;

Take them, said the skeleton,

But leave my bones alone.

Early 1949

Psalm I

These psalms are the workings of the vision haunted mind and not that reason which never changes.

I am flesh and blood, but my mind is the focus of much lightning.

I change with the weather, with the state of my finances, with the work I do, with my company.

But truly none of these is accountable for the majestic flaws of mind which have left my brain open to hallucination.

All work has been an imitation of the literary cackle in my head.

This gossip is an eccentric document to be lost in a library and rediscovered when the Dove descends.

New York, February 1949

An Eastern Ballad

I speak of love that comes to mind:

The moon is faithful, although blind;

She moves in thought she cannot speak.

Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,

The earth so dark; so long my sleep,

I have become another child.

I wake to see the world go wild.

1945–1949

Sweet Levinsky

Sweet Levinsky in the night

Sweet Levinsky in the light

do you giggle out of spite,

or are you laughing in delight

sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

Sweet Levinsky, do you tremble

when the cock crows, and dissemble

as you amble to the gambol?

Why so humble when you stumble

sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

Sweet Levinsky, why so tearful,

sweet Levinsky don’t be fearful,

sweet Levinsky here’s your earful

of the angels chirping cheerfully

Levinsky, sweet Levinsky,

sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky.

New York, Spring 1949

Psalm II

Ah, still Lord, ah, sweet Divinity

Incarnate in our grave and holy substance,

Circumscribed in this hexed endless world

Of Time, that turns a triple face, from Hell,

Imprisoned joy’s incognizable thought,

To mounted earth, that shudders to conceive,

Toward angels, borne unseen out of this world,

Translate the speechless stanzas of the rose

Into my poem, and I vow to copy

Every petal on a page; perfume

My mind, ungardened, and in weedy earth;

Let these dark leaves be lit with images

That strike like lightning from eternal mind,

Truths that are not visible in any light

That changes and is Time, like flesh or theory,

Corruptible like any clock of meat

That sickens and runs down to die

With all those structures and machinery

Whose bones and bridges break and wash to sea

And are dissolved into green salt and coral.

A Bird of Paradise, the Nightingale

I cried for not so long ago, the poet’s

Phoenix, and the erotic Swan

Which descended and transfigured Time,

And all but destroyed it, in the Dove

I speak of now are here, I saw it here,

The Miracle, which no man knows entire,

Nor I myself. But shadow is my prophet,

I cast a shadow that surpasses me,

And I write, shadow changes into bone,

To say that still Word, the prophetic image

Beyond our present strength of flesh to bear,