Book of Sketches
Page 16
bough bone of
the bush-proper &
shake to the wind with
heavy weight & thru
then see the pale
day light in veins
absorbed to suck
blushing phosphor greens
like chlorophyll
— the one recently
stillgreen deadleave
dangling on a broken stem —
East River
The old blackgarbed
watcher of cities sitting
on the Live Oak Jim
NewYork barge in the
dry cool afternoon —
watching tugs warp in
finished excursion boats, river
tankers, barges pass —
his interest in the river,
the names of Tug Captains
& Excursion Steamer deck-
hands, the arrival &
departure of great
ocean going orange masted
like the Waterman
Liberty today docked
at Jack Frost Sugars
across the river in L I City
— This old guy, with
whitefringe hair around
baldspot but wearing his
black soothat, sits on
the bit on the swaying barge,
smoking, — to him the
city & the world is such
a different thing as it is
just across the Drive in
Bellevue Hospital where
in density of world interest
now gloomy psychiatrists
consult with patients &
aint interested in the sun
on the river, the free
gulls floating in the
sleepy tide, the
gay littleboats,
but in problems of
marriage & emotional adjustment
& all such dark,
gloomy, indoor preoccupations
& with such contempt for
those like those on the
river who dont interiorate
with them in this Byzantine
Vault of Mind Horror —
the walls of Bellevue,
dirty rosebrick grim beneath
shining purities of clearday
heaven, the ink of
the windows, the soot
darkness of the bars in
the windows, the formidable
mass & camp
& hangup of the
great structure — & only
beyond, above the white
clean modernisms of a
new bldg. N.Y.U. Medical
Science bldg. there rises
the screwpoint phallus
Empire State Building with
his new TV French
tickler on the end,
clouds of lost hope,
sweet, impossible, pass
behind it high, there
the interests of millionaire
corporations high above
the tangled human streets
— old Live Oak Jim
aint interested in but just
the river & that
Lehigh Valley barge
with the 2 cuts of cars
being loaded, meeting of
railroad & seawater rail
to railpoint in the
actual workingman
afternoon of the real
world — And yet
above all, the mystery,
Live Oak Jim really is
an old ex Bellevue
mental patient, flipped
in ’33, knows it well,
has his back to it now
in studies of his river,
— now’s inside napping,
his brother is a lawyer
in the Empire State Bldg.
Black Tanker
Gloomy black tanker
being tugged in, the gray
superstructure as tho they
hadnt in 10 years yet
scraped the war paint
camouflage off, the
blue stack with white
“T” — the black
sinister hull, — “Michael
Tracy” — deck gang
chipping hatch covers
upstood — stewards
huddled at stern in
idiot white, watching
waters — “I’m
gonna git drunk
tonight!” In from
Persian Gulf
New York Panorama
The UN Building with
white marble side, little
laddrs of workers strung
up the side — Queensboro
Bridge with archaic
pinpoint boings & big
superstructure with
minute traffic & looking
Chinese in the
sod besoiled soot
stained cleanpale
lateafternoon sky —
the river tide swells
& is somber below
the sad slow parade
of truckforms & car
insects inching to the
Eternity — In Long
Island City antique brewery
red oldbuildings like
Jamestown in 1752,
steeples, wine red ware-
house pier, orange clean
stacks of ships —
1837 written on a huge
grim dirtybrick gallow-
house nameless iron
rack cluttered warehouse
— lost unknown blood
brick factories spewing
smoke — behind them
other smokes of further
dim cement rack
factories pale & vague
as dawn in the pale
worm of the sky —
rosy clouds above — like
off the coast of Manzanillo —
Subway Sensations
Smell of burnt nuts
in the power of the
car & the aromatic
almond dusts of the
tunnel — Growling
whine of the shurry
moveahead car as
it balls from one
station faster light-
flashing to another
till wasting the
brakes crash to
stop & the whine
amid knocks &
wheel bumps lowers, till
the stop, the doors,
the bump, the
restless churry churry
wurd wurd wurd of
the power as it waits
to resume — cars
swaying, vestibule swaying
— The switch
point ta tap too boom
like a song crossing
another track on
bumpy parts of
track — The Mexico
cafeteria tile of
station walls — the
start-up again, the
growing whur of the
power to fly another
black halfmile with
smashing crossings of
posts & dark reelby
of pipes, lights,
concrete curbs, darkness,
Egyptian mummy niches,
— till the station
again,
the “Quick
Relief Tums And
Indigestion” sign
MY MOTHER’S FRENCH CANADIAN SONGS
TI SAUVAGE NOIR
C’est un ti savage noir-e
Noir tous barbouillez wish-té
S’en vas’ t’ a la rivière
C’éta pour se baigner wish-té
Tou-ma-né-got-a-wilta
wilta
Tou-ma-né-gét-a-wilté
wilté
Manégé — wish-té
De la premiere-e plonge
Le savage a chanter wish-té
De la second-eplonge
Le savage c’ai baigner wish-té
Tou-ma-né-got-a-wilta
wilta
Tou-ma-né-gét-a-wilté
wilté
De la second-e plonge —
Le savage s’ai baigner wish-té
De la troixieme plonge
Le savage c’est noyer wish-té
Tou-ma-né-got-a-wilta
wilta
Tou-ma-né-gét-a-wilté
wilté
ÉLANCETTE (sung fast) (Caughnawaga Indian)
Élancette me tonté (Song)
Ma ka hi
Ma ka haw
Baisser
Ma ka hi cawsette
O bé go zo
Ma gou sette-a
BUTTER SONG
Encore un ti coup
Ça raidit toujours
Vire la manivelle
Mamoiselle
Mam-selle-a
Encore un ti coup
Ça raidit toujours
Vire la manivelle
Mamoiselle
Ç’est tous
New York tenement
window sill, they want to
hold nature close to their
lives, they have pathetic
little pots with dead
roots & stems — One
tiny earthen pot sits
in an asparagus can,
its produce is 2 stems
with dry dead leaves
fawdling houseward &
as tho falling in —
Another clay pot
has a completely just
died green that has
shot up & then
down to die on the outside
at the base of the pot
the stem completely bent
& despairing — Two nameless
blackpainted tin cans,
small ones, former frozen
orange juice cans, with
just dry white earth in
em — A larger black
can with nothing in it —
A tiny new-shining clay
pot with a little
fwit hollow stalk
like dead cornstalk
sticking out — Another
clay pot with a
sprig of last Autumn’s
dead leaves torn with
a stem from some
tree it would seem —
One final jar with a
kind of scallion looking
green growth the only
live thing in the sad
window the sill of
which is incredibly
chipped dry slivery
wood painted onetime
sick blue — the
window frame sick
green — The inside
wall bilious yellowish
with stains — the
outside wall of the
building at that point
out in the back alley
a kind of stucco cement
with gaps showing
underneath concretes
— the sill’s outer
extremity is a slab of
rock — Here in the
hot dogday last days
of August the windowsill
hangs in bleary reality
meaningless with cans
& dry roots beneath
an open unwashed windowpane,
clutters of
wrinkled huskleaf that
suddenly jiggle in a
breeze —
The person who has it
is off to work, his
handiwork window in
the great symphony of
NY throws one mite
little note into the
general disharmonious
irrationality of the
world & its world city,
as pathetic as a
job, useless as tightlipped
mute unhappiness
of people rising on rainy
Sunday afternoons to
their further tasks of
carrying the burden of
time to a conclusion they
cannot know & would
not want to know
if they knew — the
junk in the window
is like a young woman’s
disappointed eyes on
a rainy Sunday, in the
draining dank gray room
of tenement life, her
sad feet shiftless, the
hang of her thoughts,
the angel of gray
brooding reality, the
Guardian Angel over
her sorrow, over
her little humilities
as humble as clay pots,
modest as dead
stalks & fallen vines,
— as strange & somehow
pathetically sweet as
those little frozen O J
cans painted black
by concerned hands
in a moment of
serious press-lip’d goof
in this Open Void
World forever so
nostalgic with the voices
of men
singing
for nothing & all lies —
idealistic lies of love —
“Men are tricky-tricksy”
— D. H. Lawrence, a
facetious Englishman who
stumbled on a serious truth
about love.
“Yr. mainspring is broken,
Walt Whitman.” —
Whitman should have lived
so long to hear an
irrelevant English tubercular
snarl thus at him as at
a cocktail party in
Manchester
“The Mystery of the Open Road”
or
“The Road Opens”
Great quote from D H
Lawrence whom I just
castigated & underestimated
“Stay in the flesh. Stay in the
limbs and lips and in the belly.
Stay in the breast and womb.
Stay there, O Soul, where you
belong — ” D. H. Lawrence
in “Studies in Classic
American Literature”
... on Whitman ...
The thing that eludes —
the working walls of
America, the dry yards,
the nameless meeoos
and micks you hear in
the night as if cats
were being bitten —
The endless decision of
streets.
like when he waded thru
that New Mexico flood &
lay down soaking in a
raw old gondola, trying
to light fires, & the
water all around the
boxcars of the
drag
Bring Visions of Cody
to Cowley
Sunday Night TV
Ed Sullivan looking at
audience with big dumb
nod as they applause
young girl singer with
sexy female laff —
audience applauds as
Ed inveigles them
further, says “Tremendous
job” — long-
faced serious facing
Sunday night millions
as my mother in
kitchen bends tongue on
lips tying her garbage
bags carefully from
roll of strong brown
twine, she pauses momentarily
to see TV
set from the side with
an expression of
skeptical peering curiosity
— “T’s a
Nigger?” when a
baritone comes on, with
huge voice, she
comes up winding string,
says, “S go
t a
good voice huh?”
as outside in America
cars gleam dully in
the August heatwave
Sunday night of
humidity no breeze,
the trees hanging leaves
still as stone, airplanes
passing in the overhead
Long Island softness &
the Negro is singing
“Because,” little mustache
touching almost his nose
as he says — “to
me” — clasping hands
to finish, little hanky
in suitcoat —
MY CAT
Kittigindoo sits
on his haunches on the
cement drive in the
shade turned half
around listening — he
now with pricking
ears is looking up at
house windows, eyes
green & dissatisfied
— when I call him
he is in a
trance looking strait
ahead & his ears
prick & he moves
his little mouth —
Sometimes he hangs
his head & sulks with
muscle neck, then
yawns, then moves
slowly tail a-
poppin — He loves
to eat & lick his
chops & paws — He
moves with the majesty
of a gigantic tiger
only to sit again,
lick at his paw &
look up — I wonder
how he makes the
afternoon, the day,
the time of life
& its whole long
burden there with his
tail & paw lickings
& chest nibblings &
cheek-diggings-with-
foot & neck-workings
with lowered tense
body right paw
supporting him — how
he overcomes boredom
& the burden of time
even in his 8 year
lifespan (which is
so long).
His isolateness in
the world, the
ripple afternoons —
little shadows of
windows at his
soft white feet,
the dumb pricking
rueful realizations
he has crossing the
green span of his
eyes & the lowered
pause & male wonder
of the Fall, the
consternation of
lookup, the chew
on claws with gritting
greek teeth, the
long contemplative
lick on long upheld
back leg —
The green eyed
slit & stretch of
forepaws & back
up, y-a-w-w —
Mangy, he keeps workin
on that ear of death
— I noticed in
him seeds of mange
last winter on my
poetry desk (MAGGIE
CASSIDY) — Now he