Nature boy drifts into Central American oblivion
with Seminole Patchwork and Albert Einstein,
nobody thought heat rays would end the world.
September 25, 1983
They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining
I needed a young musician take off his pants sit down on the bed and sing me the blues
I needed a teacher could nail me to the Unborn
needed a stepmother’d accomplish my natural mother’s tears
a scared friend of fame wearing locks and T’fillin by the Wall of Tears
I needed a brother was gentle, suffered to protect me from anger
needed a nephew lost, left his rice in the refrigerator with a cold spoon
Comrade farmer cook with me & study Banjo Dharma
Needed Presidents mad so I could write the Nation sane
I needed a father a poet would die
Needed the great companion dark eyes wearied brow tender heart in the grave
needed an intelligent junkie rebuke my shallow thought with dirty wit
an old girlfriend take my picture, give me a bed—
A college to be kicked out Columbia
scandal jail the clang of Iron madhouse to wake my 22’d year
Invented all these companions, wept & prayed them into flesh
needed these Creatures to be Allen Ginsberg this my self
crying the world awake mid oceans of suffering blood
needed to be the liar of Existence in America
Manslaughter showed me the True Falsehood of Law
Needed a Buddha enlightened I be enlightened
a bed to sleep in, a grave to cover my ashes.
October 1, 1983
White Shroud
I am summoned from my bed
To the Great City of the Dead
Where I have no house or home
But in dreams may sometime roam
Looking for my ancient room
A feeling in my heart of doom,
Where Grandmother aged lies
In her couch of later days
And my mother saner than I
Laughs and cries She’s still alive.
I found myself again in the Great Eastern Metropolis,
wandering under Elevated Transport’s iron struts—
many-windowed apartments walled the crowded Bronx road-way
under old theater roofs, masses of poor women shopping
in black shawls past candy store news stands, children skipped beside
grandfathers bent tottering on their canes. I’d descended
to this same street from blackened subways Sundays long ago,
tea and lox with my aunt and dentist cousin when I was ten.
The living pacifist David Dellinger walked at my right side,
he’d driven from Vermont to visit Catholic Worker
Tivoli Farm, we rode up North Manhattan in his car,
relieved the U.S. wars were over in the newspaper,
Television’s frenzied dance of dots & shadows calmed—Now
older than our shouts and banners, we explored brick avenues
we lived in to find new residences, rent loft offices
or roomy apartments, retire our eyes & ears & thoughts.
Surprised, I passed the open Chamber where my Russian Jewish
Grandmother lay in her bed and sighed eating a little Chicken
soup or borscht, potato latkes, crumbs on her blankets, talking
Yiddish, complaining solitude abandoned in Old Folks House.
I realized I could find a place to sleep in the neighborhood, what
relief, the family together again, first time in decades!—
Now vigorous Middle aged I climbed hillside streets in West Bronx
looking for my own hot-water furnished flat to settle in,
close to visit my grandmother, read Sunday newspapers
in vast glassy Cafeterias, smoke over pencils & paper,
poetry desk, happy with books father’d left in the attic,
peaceful encyclopedia and a radio in the kitchen.
An old black janitor swept the gutter, street dogs sniffed red hydrants,
nurses pushed baby carriages past silent house fronts.
Anxious I be settled with money in my own place before
nightfall, I wandered tenement embankments overlooking
the pillared subway trestles by the bridge crossing Bronx River.
How like Paris or Budapest suburbs, far from Centrum
Left Bank junky doorstep tragedy intellectual fights
in restaurant bars, where a spry old lady carried her
Century Universal View camera to record Works
Progress Administration newspaper metropolis
double-decker buses in September sun near Broadway El,
skyscraper roofs upreared ten thousand office windows shining
electric-lit above tiny taxis street lamp’d in Mid-town
avenues’ late-afternoon darkness the day before Christmas,
Herald Square crowds thronged past traffic lights July noon to lunch
Shop under Macy’s department store awnings for dry goods
pause with satchels at Frankfurter counters wearing stylish straw
hats of the decade, mankind thriving in their solitudes in shoes.
But I’d strayed too long amused in the picture cavalcade,
Where was I living? I remembered looking for a house
& eating in apartment kitchens, bookshelf decades ago, Aunt
Rose’s illness, an appendix operation, teeth braces,
one afternoon fitting eyeglasses first time, combing wet hair
back on my skull, young awkward looking in the high school mirror
photograph. The Dead look for a home, but here I was still alive.
I walked past a niche between buildings with tin canopy
shelter from cold rain warmed by hot exhaust from subway gratings,
beneath which engines throbbed with pleasant quiet drone.
A shopping-bag lady lived in the side alley on a mattress,
her wooden bed above the pavement, many blankets and sheets,
Pots, pans, and plates beside her, fan, electric stove by the wall.
She looked desolate, white haired, but strong enough to cook and stare.
Passersby ignored her buildingside hovel many years,
a few businessmen stopped to speak, or give her bread or yogurt.
Sometimes she disappeared into state hospital back wards,
but now’d returned to her homely alleyway, sharp eyed, old
Cranky hair, half paralyzed, complaining angry as I passed.
I was horrified a little, who’d take care of such a woman,
familiar, half-neglected on her street except she’d weathered
many snows stubborn alone in her motheaten rabbit-fur hat.
She had tooth troubles, teeth too old, ground down like horse molars—
she opened her mouth to display her gorge—how can she live
with that, how eat I thought, mushroom-like gray-white horseshoe of
incisors she chomped with, hard flat flowers ranged around her gums.
Then I recognized she was my mother, Naomi, habiting
this old city-edge corner, older than I knew her before
her life diappeared. What are you doing here? I asked, amazed
she recognized me still, astounded to see her sitting up
on her own, chin raised to greet me mocking “I’m living alone,
you all abandoned me, I’m a great woman, I came here
by myself, I wanted to live, now I’m too old to take care
of myself, I don’t care, what are you doing here?” I
was looking for a house, I thought, she has one, in poor
Bronx, needs someone to help her shop and cook, needs her children now,
I’m her younger son, walked past her alleyway by accident,
&
nbsp; but here she is survived, sleeping at night awake on that
wooden platform. Has she an extra room? I noticed her cave
adjoined an apartment door, unpainted basement storeroom
facing her shelter in the building side. I could live here,
worst comes to worst, best place I’ll find, near my mother in
our mortal life. My years of haunting continental city streets,
apartment dreams, old rooms I used to live in, still paid rent for,
key didn’t work, locks changed, immigrant families occupied
my familiar hallway lodgings—I’d wandered downhill homeless
avenues, money lost, or’d come back to the flat—But couldn’t
recognize my house in London, Paris, Bronx, by Columbia
library, downtown 8th Avenue near Chelsea Subway—
Those years unsettled—were over now, here I could live
forever, here have a home, with Naomi, at long last,
at long long last, my search was ended in this pleasant way,
time to care for her before death, long way to go yet,
lots of trouble her cantankerous habits, shameful blankets
near the street, tooth pots, dirty pans, half paralyzed irritable,
she needed my middle aged strength and worldly money knowledge,
housekeeping art. I can cook and write books for a living,
she’ll not have to beg her medicine food, a new set of teeth
for company, won’t yell at the world, I can afford a telephone,
after twenty-five years we could call up Aunt Edie in California,
I’ll have a place to stay. “Best of all,” I told Naomi
“Now don’t get mad, you realize your old enemy Grandma’s
still alive! She lives a couple blocks down hill, I just saw her,
like you!” My breast rejoiced, all my troubles over, she was
content, too old to care or yell her grudge, only complaining
her bad teeth. What long-sought peace!
Then glad of life I woke
in Boulder before dawn, my second story bedroom windows
Bluff Street facing East over town rooftops, I returned
from the Land of the Dead to living Poesy, and wrote
this tale of long lost joy, to have seen my mother again!
And when the ink ran out of my pen, and rosy violet
illumined city treetop skies above the Flatiron Front Range,
I went downstairs to the shady living room, where Peter Orlovsky
sat with long hair lit by television glow to watch
the sunrise weather news, I kissed him & filled my pen and wept.
October 5, 1983, 6:35 A.M.
Empire Air
Flying to Rochester Institute of Technology
Rising above the used car lots & colored dumps of Long Island
stubby white smokestreams drift North above th’ Egyptic Factory roof’d monolith
into gray clouds, Conquer the world!
World Health restored with organic orange juice & Tibetan mule-dung-smelling Pills—Conquer the World Conquer the World
Conquer the World of Ego, Conquer World Anger
Conquer brick Worlds, Mortal Factories!
Conquer the Dewdrop? Conquer white clouded Sky we pass through?—
O ever-rising intelligent Sun conquer the night of Mind
Conquer War O Technologic Warrior
1 ride above the Sun
I look down into the Sun
I’m equal to Sun, Sun & I on the level
I’ve no appendicitis, I hang a Brooks Brothers tie
My clothes are Salvation Army! Conquer America! Conquer Greed! Conquer warmonger Hands!
Conquer yourself! Conquer your gluttony Ginsberg! Conquer lust for Conquest!
Conquer Conquest at last! All right Jack Number One! Creon wrecks Imperial City!
Conquer by Calm! Conquer by not getting laid, growing younger & older same time!
Conquer by having a hard on! Conquer all space by giving it away! Conquer the Universe by inhabiting it!
Conquer by Dying! By eating decently! Wash yr behind after you move your bowels!
Pronounce your mother American language marvelously, mouth every syllable, savor every vowel, appreciate each consonant!
above the clouds! Conquer Karma, the chain of Cause and Effect
Conquer Cause & Effect, see it work the Cold War!
See it work in your heart!
Insult your girlfriend you’ll feel hurt!
Insult Nicaragua you feel lousy
Insult the President you insult yourself
Conquer the President by not insulting him!
Don’t insult yourself! stop insulting the Russians! stop insulting the enemy!
It costs $220800000000 a year to insult the enemy!
Conquer Underdeveloped Nation Hunger Debt! Conquer World Grief Bank default! Go Conquer mortal Nuclear Waste!
Then go back Conquer your own heart!
January 30, 1984
Surprise Mind
How lucky we are to have windows!
Glass is transparent!
I saw that boy in red bathingsuit
walk down the street.
July 7, 1984, 8:30 A.M.
Student Love
The boy’s fresh faced, 18, big smile
underwear hangs below his shorts, he’s a kid
still growing
legs strong, he hugs me, steps away—
In twenty years thick bellied,
bright eyes dulled with office work,
his children’ll pout in the
bathroom—
Better get in bed with him on top of me now
laughing at my pot belly
before decades pass, bring our bony skulls whispering
to the hospital bedside.
July 31, 1984
The Question
When that dress-gray, gray haired and gray-faced
goblin took charge of me then inside the gate,
which closed behind me for a couple years,
I was still cheerful exceedingly
cheerful nodding out (hadn’t slept for days),
cheerful because taking part in real life
action again, two serious gentlemen
at my shoulders in a night-colored car which
special for me rolled across December’s bridge,
cheerful because I’d yelled out in the street
that this one and that one should be notified,
cheerful because I thought the adventure
a minor excursion, but cheerful also,
because such a gray such a small Uncle
I’d never seen yet, he however
wasn’t cheerful, was reassuringly
bored bananas, boringly signed for
my delivery and boringly
turned my seven pockets inside out,
then with a wooden face confiscated
handkerchief, pocketknife, bunch of keys,
next indifferently requested my belt
and examined personally whether
my underpants operated with string,
yawned apathetic patting me down,
last nearly napping asked for the laces
that wagged lighthearted from my shoetops—
“I can’t walk like this”—he shrugged a shoulder.
Left hand holding my pants up, spellbound by
this unprecedented situation, yet
still cavalier I bowed deep presenting
him with the shoelaces in my right hand.
“What’s the point anyhow? I really don’t
intend to hang myself”—I assured him
lighthearted. “You don’t?” he questioned. … “Why not?”
On his sallow face neither mockery nor hate.
That was when the fear caught up with me.
István Eörsi
Translated with author by A. G. Septemb
er 5, 1984
In My Kitchen in New York
for Bataan Faigao
Bend knees, shift weight—
Picasso’s blue deathhead self portrait
tacked on refrigerator door—
This is the only space in the apartment
big enough to do T’ai chi—
Straighten right foot & rise—I wonder
if I should have set aside that garbage
pail—
Raise up my hands & bring them back to
shoulders—The towels and pajama
laundry’s hanging on a rope in the hall—
Push down & grasp the sparrow’s tail—
Those paper boxes of grocery bags are
blocking the closed door—
Turn north—I should hang up all
those pots on the stovetop—
Am I holding the world right?—That
Hopi picture on the wall shows
rain & lightning bolt—
Turn right again—thru the door, God
my office space, a mess of
pictures & unanswered letters—
Left on my hips—Thank God Arthur Rimbaud’s
watching me from over the sink—
Single whip—piano’s in the room, well
Steven & Maria finally’ll move to their
own apartment next week! His pants’re
still here & Julius in his bed—
This gesture’s the opposite of St. Francis
in Ecstasy by Bellini—hands
down for me—
I better concentrate on what I’m doing—
weight in belly, move from hips—
No, that was the single whip—that apron’s
hanging on the North wall a year
I haven’t used it once
Except to wipe my hands—the Crane
spreads its wings—have I paid
the electric bill?
Playing the guitar—do I have enough $
to leave the rent paid while I’m
in China?
Brush knee—that was good
halvah, pounded sesame seed,
in the icebox a week—
Withdraw & push—I should
get a loft or giant living room—
The land speculators bought up all
the square feet in Manhattan,
beginning with the Indians—
Cross hands—I should write
a letter to the Times saying
it’s unethical.
Come to rest hands down knees
straight—I wonder how
Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 72