Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 43

• Предыдущая
• 43/287
• Следующая

you’re sitting in your suspenders on the bed

the shadow hand lifts up a Lysol bottle to your head

your shade falls over on the floor

Paris, May 1958

To Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose—now—might I see you

with your thin face and buck tooth smile and pain

     of rheumatism—and a long black heavy shoe

          for your bony left leg

limping down the long hall in Newark on the running carpet

     past the black grand piano

          in the day room

               where the parties were

     and I sang Spanish loyalist songs

       in a high squeaky voice

          (hysterical) the committee listening

       while you limped around the room

          collected the money—

Aunt Honey, Uncle Sam, a stranger with a cloth arm

     in his pocket

          and huge young bald head

          of Abraham Lincoln Brigade

—your long sad face

     your tears of sexual frustration

          (what smothered sobs and bony hips

               under the pillows of Osborne Terrace)

—the time I stood on the toilet seat naked

     and you powdered my thighs with calamine

          against the poison ivy—my tender

               and shamed first black curled hairs

what were you thinking in secret heart then

     knowing me a man already—

and I an ignorant girl of family silence on the thin pedestal

     of my legs in the bathroom—Museum of Newark.

          Aunt Rose

Hitler is dead, Hitler is in Eternity; Hitler is with

     Tamburlane and Emily Bronte

Though I see you walking still, a ghost on Osborne Terrace

     down the long dark hall to the front door

    limping a little with a pinched smile

     in what must have been a silken

          flower dress

welcoming my father, the Poet, on his visit to Newark

     —see you arriving in the living room

          dancing on your crippled leg

     and clapping hands his book

          had been accepted by Liveright

Hitler is dead and Liveright’s gone out of business

The Attic of the Past and Everlasting Minute are out of print

          Uncle Harry sold his last silk stocking

     Claire quit interpretive dancing school

          Buba sits a wrinkled monument in Old

               Ladies Home blinking at new babies

last time I saw you was the hospital

     pale skull protruding under ashen skin

          blue veined unconscious girl

               in an oxygen tent

     the war in Spain has ended long ago

               Aunt Rose

Paris, June 1958

American Change

The first I looked on, after a long time far from home in mid Atlantic on a summer day

Dolphins breaking the glassy water under the blue sky,

a gleam of silver in my cabin, fished up out of my jangling new pocket of coins and green dollars

—held in my palm, the head of the feathered indian, old Buck-Rogers eagle eyed face, a gash of hunger in the cheek

gritted jaw of the vanished man begone like a Hebrew with hairlock combed down the side—O Rabbi Indian

what visionary gleam 100 years ago on Buffalo prairie under the molten cloud-shot sky, ’the same clear light 10000 miles in all directions

but now with all the violin music of Vienna, gone into the great slot machine of Kansas City, Reno—

The coin seemed so small after vast European coppers thick francs leaden pesetas, lire endless and heavy,

a miniature primeval memorialized in 5? nickel candy-store nostalgia of the redskin, dead on silver coin,

with shaggy buffalo on reverse, hump-backed little tail incurved, head butting against the rondure of Eternity,

cock forelock below, bearded shoulder muscle folded below muscle, head of prophet, bowed,

vanishing beast of Time, hoar body rubbed clean of wrinkles and shining like polished stone, bright metal in my forefinger, ridiculous buffalo —Go to New York.

   Dime next I found, Minerva, sexless cold & chill, ascending goddess of money—and was it the wife of Wallace Stevens, truly?

and now from the locks flowing the miniature wings of speedy thought,

executive dyke, Minerva, goddess of Madison Avenue, forgotten useless dime that can’t buy hot dog, dead dime—

Then we’ve George Washington, less primitive, the snub-nosed quarter, smug eyes and mouth, some idiot’s design of the sexless Father,

naked down to his neck, a ribbon in his wig, high forehead, Roman line down the nose, fat cheeked, still showing his falsetooth ideas—O Eisenhower & Washington—O Fathers—No movie star dark beauty—O thou Bignoses—

Quarter, remembered quarter, 40? in all—What’ll you buy me when I land—one icecream soda?—

poor pile of coins, original reminders of the sadness, forgotten money of America—

nostalgia of the first touch of those coins, American change,

the memory in my aging hand, the same old silver reflective there,

the thin dime hidden between my thumb and forefinger

All the struggles for those coins, the sadness of their reappearance

my reappearance on those fabled shores

and the failure of that Dream, that Vision of Money reduced to this haunting recollection

of the gas lot in Paterson where I found half a dollar gleaming in the grass—

   I have a $5 bill in my pocket—it’s Lincoln’s sour black head moled wrinkled, forelocked too, big eared, flags of announcement flying over the bill, stamps in green and spiderweb black,

long numbers in racetrack green, immense promise, a girl, a hotel, a busride to Albany, a night of brilliant drunk in some faraway corner of Manhattan

a stick of several teas, or paper or cap of Heroin, or a $5 strange present to the blind.

• Предыдущая
• 43/287
• Следующая