Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 15
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in the wrack and wild love of time.
It’s death that makes man’s life a dream
and heaven’s splendor but a wave;
light that falls into the sea
is swallowed in a starving cave.
Skin may be visionary till the crystal
skull is coaled in aged shade,
but underground the lantern dies,
shroud must rot, and memory fade.
Who talks of Death and Angel now,
great angel darkened out of grace?
The shroud enfolds your radiant doom,
the silent Parcae change the race,
while the man of the apocalypse
shall with his wrath lie ever wed
until the sexless womb bear love,
and the grave be weary of the dead,
tragical master broken down
into a self-embodied tomb,
blinded by the sight of death,
and woven in the darkened loom.
Paterson, September 1950
Ode: My 24th Year
Now I have become a man
and know no more than mankind can
and groan with nature’s every groan,
transcending child’s blind skeleton
and all childish divinity,
while loomed in consanguinity
the weaving of the shroud goes on.
No two things alike; and yet
first memory dies, then I forget
one carnal thought that made thought grim:
but that has sunk below time’s rim
and wonder ageing into woe
later dayes more fatal show:
Time gets thicker, light gets dim.
And I a second Time am blind,
all starlight dimmed out of the mind
that was first candle to the morn,
and candelabra turned to thorn.
All is dream till morn has rayed
the Rose of night back into shade,
Messiah firmament reborn.
Now I cannot go be wild
or harken back to shape of child
chrystal born into the aire
circled by the harte and bear
and agelesse in a greene arcade,
for he is down in Granite laid,
or standing on a Granite stair.
No return, where thought’s completed;
let that ghost’s last gaze go cheated:
I may waste my days no more
pining in spirituall warre.
Where am I in wilderness?
What creature bore my bones to this?
Here is no Eden: this is my store.
September 1950–1951
How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory
Chorus of Working Girls
There was this character come in
to pick up all the broken threads
and tie them back into the loom.
He thought that what he didn’t know
would do as well as well did, tying
threads together with real small knots.
So there he was shivering in his shoes,
showing his wish to be a god of all the knots
we tended after suffering to learn them up.
But years ago we were employed by Mr. Smith
to tie these knots which it took us all
of six months to perfect. However he showed
no sign of progress learning how after five
weeks of frigid circumstances of his own
making which we made sure he didn’t break
out of by freezing up on him. Obviously
he wasn’t a real man anyway but a goop.
New York, Late 1950
The Archetype Poem
Joe Blow has decided
he will no longer
be a fairy.
He involves himself
in various snatches
and then hits
a nut named Mary.
He gets in bed with her
and performs
as what in his mind
would be his usual
okay job,
which should be solid
as a rock
but isn’t.
What goes wrong here?
he says
to himself. I want
to take her
but she doesn’t want
to take me.
I thought I was
giving her * * *
and she was giving
me a man’s
position in the world.
Now suddenly she lays
down the law.
I’m very tired, she says,
please go.
Is this it? he thinks.
I didn’t want it
to come to that but
I’ve got to get out
of this situation.
So the question
resolves itself: do
you settle for her
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