Page 18 of Big Sur


  With the same quiet steady smile Billie says “Oh you’re so fucking neurotic!”

  I simply get mad and dump earth over the garbage and tromp it all down and say “The hell with all this madness!”

  I get mad and stomp up on the porch and throw myself in the canvas chair and close my eyes—Dave Wain says he’s going down the road to investigate the canyon a bit and when he comes back the girls will have finished packing and we’ll all leave—Dave goes off, the girls clean up and sweep, the little kid is sleeping and suddenly hopelessly and completely finished I sit there in the hot sun and close my eyes: and there’s the golden swarming peace of Heaven in my eyelids—It comes with a sure hand a soft blessing as big as it is beneficent, i.e., endless—I’ve fallen asleep.

  I’ve fallen asleep in a strange way, with my hands clasped behind my head thinking I’m just going to sit there and think, but I’m sleeping like that, and when I wake up just one short minute later I realize the two girls are both sitting behind me in absolute silence—When I’d sat down they were sweeping, but now they were squatting behind my back, facing each other, not a word—I turn and see them there—Blessed relief has come to me from just that minute—Everything has washed away—I’m perfectly normal again—Dave Wain is down the road looking at fields and flowers—I’m sitting smiling in the sun, the birds sing again, all’s well again.

  I still cant understand it.

  Most of all I cant understand the miraculousness of the silence of the girls and the sleeping boy and the silence of Dave Wain in the fields—Just a golden wash of goodness has spread over all and over all my body and mind—All the dark torture is a memory—I know now I can get out of there, we’ll drive back to the City, I’ll take Billie home, I’ll say goodbye to her properly, she wont commit no suicide or do anything wrong, she’ll forget me, her life’ll go on, Romana’s life will go on, old Dave will manage somehow, I’ll forgive them and explain everything (as I’m doing now)—And Cody, and George Baso, and ravened McLear and perfect starry Fagan, they’ll all pass through one way or the other—I’ll stay with Monsanto at his home a few days and he’ll smile and show me how to be happy awhile, we’ll drink dry wine instead of sweet and have quiet evenings in his home—Arthur Ma will come to quietly draw pictures at my side—Monsanto will say “That’s all there is to it, take it easy, everything’s okay, dont take things too serious, it’s bad enough as it is without you going the deep end over imaginary conceptions just like you always said yourself”—I’ll get my ticket and say goodbye on a flower day and leave all San Francisco behind and go back home across autumn America and it’ll all be like it was in the beginning—Simple golden eternity blessing all—Nothing ever happened—Not even this—St. Carolyn by the Sea will go on being golden one way or the other—The little boy will grow up and be a great man—There’ll be farewells and smiles—My mother’ll be waiting for me glad—The corner of the yard where Tyke is buried will be a new and fragrant shrine making my home more homelike somehow—On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars—Something good will come out of all things yet—And it will be golden and eternal just like that—There’s no need to say another word.

  “SEA”

  Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur

  “SEA”

  Cherson!

  Cherson!

  You aint just whistlin

  Dixie, Sea—

  Cherson! Cherson!

  We calcimine fathers

  here below!

  Kitchen lights on—

  Sea Engines from Russia

  seabirding here below—

  When rocks outsea froth

  I’ll know Hawaii

  cracked up & scramble

  up my doublelegged cliff

  to the silt of

  a million years—

  Shoo—Shaw—Shirsh—

  Go on die salt light

  You billion yeared

  rock knocker

  Gavroom

  Seabird

  Gabroobird

  Sad as wife & hill

  Loved as mother & fog

  Oh! Oh! Oh!

  Sea! Osh!

  Where’s yr little Neppytune

  tonight?

  These gentle tree pulp pages

  which’ve nothing to do

  with yr crash roar,

  liar sea, ah,

  were made for rock

  tumble seabird digdown

  footstep hollow weed

  move bedarvaling

  crash? Ah again?

  Wine is salt here?

  Tidal wave kitchen?

  Engines of Russia

  in yr soft talk—

  Les poissons de la mer

  parle Breton—

  Mon nom es Lebris

  de Keroack—

  Parle, Poissons, Loti,

  parle—

  Parlning Ocean sanding

  crash the billion rocks—

  Ker plotsch—

  Shore—shoe—

  god—brash—

  The headland looks like

  a longnosed Collie sleeping

  with his light on his

  nose, as the ocean,

  obeying its accomodations

  of mind, crashes in

  rhythm which could

  & will intrude, in thy

  rhythm of sand

  thought—

  —Big frigging shoulders

  on that sonofabitch

  Parle, O, parle, mer, parle,

  Sea speak to me, speak

  to me, your silver you light

  Where hole opened up in Alaska

  Gray—shh—wind in

  The canyon wind in the rain

  Wind in the rolling rash

  Moving and t wedel

  Sea

  sea

  Diving sea

  O bird—la vengeance

  De la roche

  Cossez

  Ah

  Rare, he rammed the gate

  rare over by Cherson, Cherson,

  we calcify fathers here below

  —a watery cross, with weeds

  entwined—This grins restoredly,

  low sleep—Wave—Oh, no,

  shush—Shirk—Boom plop

  Neptune now his arms extends

  while one millions of souls

  sit lit in caves of darkness

  —What old bark? The dog

  mountain? Down by the Sea

  Engines? God rush—Shore—

  Shaw—Shoo—Oh soft sigh

  we wait hair twined like

  larks—Pissit—Rest not

  —Plottit, bisp tesh, cashes,

  re tav, plo, aravow,

  shirsh,—Who’s whispering over

  there—the silly earthen creek!

  The fog thunders—We put

  silver light on face—We

  took the heroes in—A billion

  years aint nothing—

  O the cities here below!

  The men with a thousand

  arms! the stanchions of

  their upward gaze! the

  coral of their poetry! the

  sea dragons tenderized, meat

  for fleshy fish—

  Navark, navark, the fishes

  of the Sea speak Breton—

  wash as soft as people’s

  dreams—We got peoples

  in & out the shore, they call

  it shore, sea call it

  pish rip plosh—The

  5 billion years since

/>   earth we saw substantial

  chan—Chinese are

  the waves—the woods

  are dreaming

  No human words bespeak

  the token sorrow older

  than old this wave

  becrashing smarts the

  sand with plosh

  of twirléd sandy

  thought—Ah change

  the world? Ah set

  the fee? Are rope the

  angels in all the sea?

  Ah ropey otter

  barnacle’d be—

  Ah cave, Ah crosh!

  A feathery sea

  Too much short—Where

  Miss Nop tonight?

  Wroten Kerarc’h

  in the labidalian

  aristotelian park

  with slime a middle

  —And Ranti forner

  who pulled pearls by

  rope to throne

  the King by

  the roll in the

  forest of everseas?

  Not everseas, be seas

  —Creep

  Crash

  The woman with her body

  in the sea—The frog who

  never moves & thunders, sharsh

  —The snake with his body

  under the sand—The dog

  with the light on his nose,

  supine, with shoulders so

  enormous they reach back to

  rain crack—The leaves hasten

  to the sea—We let them

  hasten to be wetted & give

  em that old salt change, a

  nuder think will make you see

  they originate from the We Sea

  anyway—No dooming booms

  on Sunday afternoons—We

  run thru the core of cliffs,

  blam up caves, disengage no

  jelly or jellied pendant

  thinkers—

  Our armies of

  anchored seaweed in the

  coves give of the smell

  of jellied salt—

  Reach, reach, some leaves

  havent hastened near

  enuf—Roll, roll, purl

  the sand shark floor

  a greeny pali andarva

  —Ah back—Ah forth—

  Ah shish—Boom, away,

  doom, a day—Vein we

  firm—The sea is We—

  Parle, parle, boom the

  earth—Arree—Shaw,

  Sho, Shoosh, flut,

  ravad, tapavada pow,

  coof, loof, roof,—

  No,no,no,no,no,no—

  Oh ya, ya, ya, yo, yair—

  Shhh—

  Which one? the one? Which

  one? The one ploshed—

  The ploshed one? the same,

  ah boom—Who’s that ant

  that giant golden saltchange

  ant magnifying my mountain

  of feet? ’Tis Finder, finding

  the change in thought to join

  the boomer hangers in the

  cave a light—And built a

  house above it? Never fear,

  naver foir, les bretons qui

  parlent la langue de la Mar

  sont español comme le cul

  du Kurd qui dit le maha

  prajna paramita du Sud?

  Ah oui! Ke Vlum!

  Glum sea, silent me—

  They aint about to try

  it them ants who wear

  out tunnels in a week

  the tunnel a million years

  won—no—Down around

  the headland slobs for weed,

  the chicken of the sea

  go yak! they sleep—

  Aroar, aroar, arah, aroo—

  Otter me otter me daughter me sea

  —me last blue lagoon inside of

  me, the sea—Divine is the

  substance all over the Sea—

  Of space we speak &

  hasten—Let no mouth

  swallow the sea—Gavril—

  Gavro—the Cherson Chinese

  & Old Fingernail sea—Is

  ringin yr ear? Dier, dee?

  Is Virgin you trying to

  fathom me

  Tiresome old sea, aint you sick

  & tired of all of this merde?

  this incessant boom boom

  & sand walk—you people

  hoary rockies here to Fuegie

  & never get sad? Or despair

  like a German phoney?

  Just gloom booboom & green

  on foggy nights—the fog is part

  of us—

  I know, but tired

  as I can be listening to all

  this silly majesty—

  Bashô!

  Lao!

  Pop!

  Who is this fish

  sitting unsunk? Run up

  a Hawaii typhoon smash him

  against his rock—We’ll jelly you,

  jellied man, show you essential

  jello of the sea—King

  of the Sea.

  No Monarc’h ever Irish be?

  Ju see the Irish sea?

  Green winds on tamarack vines—

  Joyce—James—Shhish—

  Sea—Sssssss—see

  —Varash

  —mnavash la vache

  écriture—the sea dont say

  muc’h actually—

  Gosh, she,

  huzzy, tow, led men

  on, Ulysses and all them

  fair headed moin—

  Terplash, & what difference

  make! One little white

  spark of light!

  Hair woven hands

  Penelope seaboat

  smeller—Courtiers in

  Telemachus ’sguise

  dropedary dropedary

  creep—Or—

  Franc gold rippled

  that undersea creek

  where fish fish for

  fisher men—Salteen

  breen the wet Souwesters

  of old Portugee Prayers

  Tsall tangled, changed,

  salt & drop the sand

  & weed & water brains

  entangled—Rats

  of old Venetian yellers

  Ariel Calibanned

  to Roma Port—

  Pow—spell—

  Speak you parler,

  in this my mother’s

  parlor, wash your

  undershoes when you

  come in, say thanks

  to foggy moon

  Go brash, Topahta

  offat,—we’ll gray

  ye rose—Morning

  primord creeper sees

  the bird of paravision

  dying tweet the yellow

  mouthroof! How sweet

  the earth, yells sand!

  Xcept when tumble

  boom!

  O we wait too

  for Heaven—all

  in One—

  All is there

  in fair & sight

  I’m going to wash now

  old Pavia down,

  & pack my salt

  to Either Town—

  Cliffs of Antique

  aint got no rose,

  the morning’s seen

  the ledder pose—


  Boom de boom dey

  the sea is me—

  We are the sea—

  It aint all snow

  We wash Fujiyama down

  soon, & sand

  crookbird back—

  We hie bash

  rock—ak—

  Long short—

  Low and easy—

  Wind & many freezing

  bottoms on luckrock—

  Rappaport—

  Endymion thou tangled

  dreamer love my thigh

  —Rose, Of Shelley,

  Rose, O Urns!

  Ogled urns in fish eye

  Cinco sea the Chico sea

  the Magellan headland sea

  —What hype sidereal did he put down

  bending beatnik sea goatee

  over old goat manuscripts

  to find the other side of Flat?

  See round, see the end of me?

  Rounden huge bedoom?

  Awp hole cave & shwrul—

  sand & salt & hair eyes

  —Strong enuf to make

  coffee grow in your hair—

  Whose plantation Neptune got?

  That of Atlas still down there,

  Hesperid’s his feet, Sur his sleet,

  Irish Sea fingertip

  & Cornwall aye his soul

  bedoom

  Shurning—Shurning—plop

  be dosh—This sigh old learning’s

  high beside me—Rough

  old hands have played out