Collected Poems 1947-1997

  But merry, mad and free

  My love was. Look! yet come love hath.

  Is this not great gentility?

  I only remembered the ocean’s roll,

  And islands that I passed,

  And, in a vision of death and dread,

  A city where my soul

  Visited its vast

  Passage of the dead.

  My love’s eternity

  I never entered, when, at last

  “I blush with love for thee,”

  My love, renewed in anger, said.

  Is this not great gentility?

  Over the road in an automobile

  Rode I and my gentle love.

  The traffic on our way was wild;

  My love was at the wheel,

  And in and out we drove.

  My own eyes were mild.

  How my love merrily

  Dared the other cars to rove:

  “But if they stop for me,

  Why, then, I stop for them, my child.”

  Is this not great gentility?

  East Harlem, July 1948

  The Voice of Rock

  I cannot sleep, I cannot sleep

  until a victim is resigned;

  a shadow holds me in his keep

  and seeks the bones that he must find;

  and hoveled in a shroudy heap

  dead eyes see, and dead eyes weep,

  dead men from the coffin creep,

  nightmare of murder in the mind.

  Murder has the ghost of shame

  that lies abed with me in dirt

  and mouths the matter of my fame.

  With voice of rock, and rock engirt,

  a shadow cries out in my name;

  he struggles for my writhing frame;

  my death and his were not the same,

  what wounds have I that he is hurt?

  This is such murder that my own

  incorporeal blood is shed,

  but shadow changes into bone,

  and thoughts are doubled in my head;

  for what he knows and I have known

  is, like a crystal lost in stone,

  hidden in skin and buried down,

  blind as the vision of the dead.

  Paterson, August 1948

  Refrain

  The air is dark, the night is sad,

  I lie sleepless and I groan.

  Nobody cares when a man goes mad:

  He is sorry, God is glad.

  Shadow changes into bone.

  Every shadow has a name;

  When I think of mine I moan,

  I hear rumors of such fame.

  Not for pride, but only shame,

  Shadow changes into bone.

  When I blush I weep for joy,

  And laughter drops from me like stone:

  The aging laughter of the boy

  To see the ageless dead so coy.

  Shadow changes into bone.

  Paterson, August 1948

  A Western Ballad

  Copyright © 1972 by May King Poetry Music Inc., Allen Ginsberg

  A Western Ballad

  When I died, love, when I died

  my heart was broken in your care;

  I never suffered love so fair

  as now I suffer and abide

  when I died, love, when I died.

  When I died, love, when I died

  I wearied in an endless maze

  that men have walked for centuries,

  as endless as the gate was wide

  when I died, love, when I died.

  When I died, love, when I died

  there was a war in the upper air:

  all that happens, happens there;

  there was an angel at my side

  when I died, love, when I died.

  Paterson, August 1948

  The Trembling of the Veil

  Today out of the window

  the trees seemed like live

  organisms on the moon.

  Each bough extended upward

  covered at the north end

  with leaves, like a green

  hairy protuberance. I saw

  the scarlet-and-pink shoot-tips

  of budding leaves wave

  delicately in the sunlight,

  blown by the breeze,

  all the arms of the trees

  bending and straining downward

  at once when the wind

  pushed them.

  Paterson, August 1948

  A Meaningless Institution

  I was given my bedding, and a bunk

  in an enormous ward,

  surrounded by hundreds of weeping,

  decaying men and women.

  I sat on my bunk, three tiers up

  next to the ceiling,

  looking down the gray aisles.

  Old, crippled, dumb people were

  bent over sewing. A heavy girl

  in a dirty dress

  stared at me. I waited

  for an official guide to come

  and give me instructions.

  After awhile, I wandered

  off down empty corridors

  in search of a toilet.

  Dream, Paterson, Fall 1948

  A Mad Gleam

  Go back to Egypt and the Greeks,

  Where the Wizard understood

  The spectre haunted where man seeks

  And spoke to ghosts that stood in blood.

  Go back, go back to the old legend;

  The soul remembers, and is true:

  What has been most and least imagined,

  No other, there is nothing new.

  The giant Phantom is ascending

  Toward its coronation, gowned

  With music unheard, but unending:

  Follow the flower to the ground.

  New York, January 1949

  Complaint of the Skeleton to Time

  Take my love, it is not true,

  So let it tempt no body new;

  Take my lady, she will sigh

  For my bed where’er I lie;

  Take them, said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  Take my raiment, now grown cold,

  To give to some poor poet old;

  Take the skin that hoods this truth

  If his age would wear my youth;

  Take them, said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  Take the thoughts that like the wind

  Blow my body out of mind;

  Take this heart to go with that

  And pass it on from rat to rat;

  Take them, said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  Take the art which I bemoan

  In a poem’s crazy tone;

  Grind me down, though I may groan,

  To the starkest stick and stone;

  Take them, said the skeleton,

  But leave my bones alone.

  Early 1949

  Psalm I

  These psalms are the workings of the vision haunted mind and not that reason which never changes.

  I am flesh and blood, but my mind is the focus of much lightning.

  I change with the weather, with the state of my finances, with the work I do, with my company.

  But truly none of these is accountable for the majestic flaws of mind which have left my brain open to hallucination.

  All work has been an imitation of the literary cackle in my head.

  This gossip is an eccentric document to be lost in a library and rediscovered when the Dove descends.

  New York, February 1949

  An Eastern Ballad

  I speak of love that comes to mind:

  The moon is faithful, although blind;

  She moves in thought she cannot speak.

  Perfect care has made her bleak.

  I never dreamed the sea so deep,

  The earth so dark; so long my sleep,

  I have become another child.


  I wake to see the world go wild.

  1945–1949

  Sweet Levinsky

  Sweet Levinsky in the night

  Sweet Levinsky in the light

  do you giggle out of spite,

  or are you laughing in delight

  sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

  Sweet Levinsky, do you tremble

  when the cock crows, and dissemble

  as you amble to the gambol?

  Why so humble when you stumble

  sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

  Sweet Levinsky, why so tearful,

  sweet Levinsky don’t be fearful,

  sweet Levinsky here’s your earful

  of the angels chirping cheerfully

  Levinsky, sweet Levinsky,

  sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky.

  New York, Spring 1949

  Psalm II

  Ah, still Lord, ah, sweet Divinity

  Incarnate in our grave and holy substance,

  Circumscribed in this hexed endless world

  Of Time, that turns a triple face, from Hell,

  Imprisoned joy’s incognizable thought,

  To mounted earth, that shudders to conceive,

  Toward angels, borne unseen out of this world,

  Translate the speechless stanzas of the rose

  Into my poem, and I vow to copy

  Every petal on a page; perfume

  My mind, ungardened, and in weedy earth;

  Let these dark leaves be lit with images

  That strike like lightning from eternal mind,

  Truths that are not visible in any light

  That changes and is Time, like flesh or theory,

  Corruptible like any clock of meat

  That sickens and runs down to die

  With all those structures and machinery

  Whose bones and bridges break and wash to sea

  And are dissolved into green salt and coral.

  A Bird of Paradise, the Nightingale

  I cried for not so long ago, the poet’s

  Phoenix, and the erotic Swan

  Which descended and transfigured Time,

  And all but destroyed it, in the Dove

  I speak of now are here, I saw it here,

  The Miracle, which no man knows entire,

  Nor I myself. But shadow is my prophet,

  I cast a shadow that surpasses me,

  And I write, shadow changes into bone,

  To say that still Word, the prophetic image

  Beyond our present strength of flesh to bear,

  Incarnate in the rain as in the sea,

  Watches after us out of our eyes.

  What a sweet dream! to be some incorruptible

  Divinity, corporeal without a name,

  Suffering metamorphosis of flesh.

  Holy are the Visions of the soul

  The visible mind seeks out for marriage,

  As if the sleeping heart, agaze, in darkness,

  Would dream her passions out as in the Heavens.

  In flesh and flesh, imperfect spirits join

  Vision upon vision, image upon image,

  All physical and perishing, till spirit

  Driven mad by Time, a ghost still haunted

  By his mortal house, goes from the tomb

  And drops his body back into the dirt.

  I fear it till my soul remembers Heaven.

  My name is Angel and my eyes are Fire!

  O wonder, and more than wonder, in the world!

  Now I have built my Love a sepulchre

  Of whitened thoughts, and sat a year in ash,

  Grieving for the lost entempled dead,

  And Him who appeared to these dead eyes,

  And Him my wakened beating mind remembered,

  And Love that moved in substance clear as bone,

  With beautiful music, at the fatal moment,

  And clock stopped by its own, or hidden, hand.

  These are the hollow echoes of His word.

  Ah, but to have seen the Dove of still

  Divinity come down in silken light of summer sun

  In ignorance of the body and bone’s madness.

  Light falls and I fail! My youth is ending,

  All my youth, and Death and Beauty cry

  Like horns and motors from a ship afar,

  Half heard, an echo in the sea beneath,

  And Death and Beauty beckon in the dawn,

  A presage of the world of whitening shadows

  As another pale memorial.

  Ah! but to have seen the Dove, and then go blind.

  I will grow old a grey and groaning man,

  Hour after hour, with each hour a thought,

  And with each thought the same denial. Am I to spend

  My life in praise of the idea of God?

  Time leaves no hope, and leaves us none of love;

  We creep and wait, we wait and go alone.

  When will the heart be weary of its own

  Indignity? Or Time endured destroy

  The last such thoughts as these, the thoughts of Dove?

  Must ravenous reason not be self-consumed?

  Our souls are purified of Time by Time,

  And ignorance consumes itself like flesh.

  Bigger and bigger gates, Thou givest, Lord,

  And vaster deaths, and deaths not by my hand,

  Till, in each season, as the garden dies,

  I die with each, until I die no more

  Time’s many deaths, and pass toward the last gates,

  Till come, pure light, at last to pass through pearl.

  Take me to thy mansion, for I house

  In clay, in a sad dolor out of joy.

  Behold thy myth incarnate in my flesh

  Now made incarnate in Thy Psalm, O Lord.

  New York, March 1949

  Fie My Fum

  Pull my daisy,

  Tip my cup,

  Cut my thoughts

  For coconuts,

  Bone my shadow,

  Dove my soul,

  Set a halo

  On my skull,

  Ark my darkness,

  Rack my lacks,

  Bleak my lurking,

  Lark my looks,

  Start my Arden,

  Gate my shades,

  Silk my garden,

  Rose my days,

  Whore my door,

  Stone my dream,

  Milk my mind

  And make me cream,

  Say my oops,

  Ope my shell,

  Roll my bones,

  Ring my bell,

  Pope my parts,

  Pop my pot,

  Poke my pap,

  Pit my plum.

  New York, Spring 1949

  Pull My Daisy

  Pull my daisy

  tip my cup

  all my doors are open

  Cut my thoughts

  for coconuts

  all my eggs are broken

  Jack my Arden

  gate my shades

  woe my road is spoken

  Silk my garden

  rose my days

  now my prayers awaken

  Bone my shadow

  dove my dream

  start my halo bleeding

  Milk my mind &

  make me cream

  drink me when you’re ready

  Hop my heart on

  harp my height

  seraphs hold me steady

  Hip my angel

  hype my light

  lay it on the needy

  Heal the raindrop

  sow the eye

  bust my dust again

  Woe the worm

  work the wise

  dig my spade the same

  Stop the hoax

  what’s the hex

  where’s the wake

  how’s the hicks

  take my golden beam

  Rob my locker

  lick my rocks

  leap my cock in school

&
nbsp; Rack my lacks

  lark my looks

  jump right up my hole

  Whore my door

  beat my boor

  eat my snake of fool

  Craze my hair

  bare my poor

  asshole shorn of wool

  Say my oops

  ope my shell

  bite my naked nut

  Roll my bones

  ring my bell

  call my worm to sup

  Pope my parts

  pop my pot

  raise my daisy up

  Poke my pap

  pit my plum

  let my gap be shut

  Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Neal Cassady

  New York, Spring-Fall 1949

  The Shrouded Stranger

  Bare skin is my wrinkled sack

  When hot Apollo humps my back

  When Jack Frost grabs me in these rags

  I wrap my legs with burlap bags

  My flesh is cinder my face is snow

  I walk the railroad to and fro

  When city streets are black and dead

  The railroad embankment is my bed

  I sup my soup from old tin cans

  And take my sweets from little hands

  In Tiger Alley near the jail

  I steal away from the garbage pail

  In darkest night where none can see

  Down in the bowels of the factory

  I sneak barefoot upon stone

  Come and hear the old man groan

  I hide and wait like a naked child

  Under the bridge my heart goes wild

  I scream at a fire on the river bank

  I give my body to an old gas tank

  I dream that I have burning hair

  Boiled arms that claw the air

  The torso of an iron king

  And on my back a broken wing

  Who’ll go out whoring into the night

  On the eyeless road in the skinny moonlight

  Maid or dowd or athlete proud

  May wanton with me in the shroud

  Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me

  Belly to belly and knee to knee

  Who’ll look into my hooded eye

  Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?

  New York, 1949–1951

  Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City