Collected Poems 1947-1997

Musicians and audience flee the stone floor’d courtyard,

  Atrium of the Rector’s House Dubrovnik October 14, 1980, 10:45 P.M.

  “Defending the Faith”

  Stopping on the bus from Novi Pazar in the rain

  I took a leak by Maglic Castle walls

  and talked with the dogs on Ivar River Bank

  They showed me their teeth & barked a long long time.

  October 20, 1980

  Capitol Air

  I don’t like the government where I live

  I don’t like dictatorship of the Rich

  I don’t like bureaucrats telling me what to eat

  I don’t like Police dogs sniffing round my feet

  I don’t like Communist Censorship of my books

  I don’t like Marxists complaining about my looks

  I don’t like Castro insulting members of my sex

  Leftists insisting we got the mystic Fix

  I don’t like Capitalists selling me gasoline Coke

  Multinationals burning Amazon trees to smoke

  Big Corporation takeover media mind

  I don’t like the Top-bananas that’re robbing Guatemala banks blind

  I don’t like K.G.B. Gulag concentration camps

  I don’t like the Maoists’ Cambodian Death Dance

  15 Million were killed by Stalin Secretary of Terror

  He has killed our old Red Revolution for ever

  I don’t like Anarchists screaming Love Is Free

  I don’t like the C.I.A. they killed John Kennedy

  Paranoiac tanks sit in Prague and Hungary

  But I don’t like counterrevolution paid for by the C.I.A.

  Tyranny in Turkey or Korea Nineteen Eighty

  I don’t like Right Wing Death Squad Democracy

  Police State Iran Nicaragua yesterday

  Laissez-faire please Government keep your secret police offa me

  I don’t like Nationalist Supremacy White or Black

  I don’t like Narcs & Mafia marketing Smack

  The General bullying Congress in his tweed vest

  The President building up his Armies in the East & West

  I don’t like Argentine police Jail torture Truths

  Government Terrorist takeover Salvador news

  I don’t like Zionists acting Nazi Storm Troop

  Palestine Liberation cooking Israel into Moslem soup

  Capital Air

  I don’t like the Crown’s Official Secrets Act

  You can get away with murder in the Government that’s a fact

  Security cops teargassing radical kids

  In Switzerland or Czechoslovakia God Forbids

  In America it’s Attica in Russia it’s Lubianka Wall

  In China if you disappear you wouldn’t know yourself at all

  Arise Arise you citizens of the world use your lungs

  Talk back to the Tyrants all they’re afraid of is your tongues

  Two hundred Billion dollars inflates World War

  In United States every year They’re asking for more

  Russia’s got as much in tanks and laser planes

  Give or take Fifty Billion we can blow out everybody’s brains

  School’s broke down ’cause History changes every night

  Half the Free World nations are Dictatorships of the Right

  The only place socialism worked was in Gdansk, Bud

  The Communist world’s stuck together with prisoners’ blood

  The Generals say they know something worth fighting for

  They never say what till they start an unjust war

  Iranian hostage Media Hysteria sucked

  The Shah ran away with 9 Billion Iranian bucks

  Kermit Roosevelt and his U.S. dollars overthrew Mossadegh

  They wanted his oil then they got Ayatollah’s dreck

  They put in the Shah and they trained his police the Savak

  All Iran was our hostage quarter-century That’s right Jack

  Bishop Romero wrote President Carter to stop

  Sending guns to El Salvador’s Junta so he got shot

  Ambassador White blew the whistle on the White House lies

  Reagan called him home cause he looked in the dead nuns’ eyes

  Half the voters didn’t vote they knew it was too late

  Newspaper headlines called it a big Mandate

  Some people voted for Reagan eyes open wide

  3 out of 4 didn’t vote for him That’s a Landslide

  Truth may be hard to find but Falsehood’s easy

  Read between the lines our Imperialism is sleazy

  But if you think the People’s State is your Heart’s Desire

  Jump right back in the frying pan from the fire

  The System the System in Russia & China the same

  Criticize the System in Budapest lose your name

  Coca Cola Pepsi Cola in Russia & China come true

  Khrushchev yelled in Hollywood “We will bury You”

  America and Russia want to bomb themselves Okay

  Everybody dead on both sides Everybody pray

  All except the Generals in caves where they can hide

  And fuck each other in the ass waiting for the next free ride

  No hope Communism no hope Capitalism Yeah

  Everybody’s lying on both sides Nyeah nyeah nyeah

  The bloody iron curtain of American Military Power

  Is a mirror image of Russia’s red Babel-Tower

  Jesus Christ was spotless but was Crucified by the Mob

  Law & Order Herod’s hired soldiers did the job

  Flowerpower’s fine but innocence has got no Protection

  The man who shot John Lennon had a Hero-worshipper’s connection

  The moral of this song is that the world is in a horrible place

  Scientific Industry devours the human race

  Police in every country armed with Tear Gas & TV

  Secret Masters everywhere bureaucratize for you & me

  Terrorists and police together build a lowerclass Rage

  Propaganda murder manipulates the upperclass Stage

  Can’t tell the difference ’tween a turkey & a provocateur

  If you’re feeling confused the Government’s in there for sure

  Aware Aware wherever you are No Fear

  Trust your heart Don’t ride your Paranoia dear

  Breathe together with an ordinary mind

  Armed with Humor Feed & Help Enlighten Woe Mankind

  Frankfurt-New York, December 15, 1980

  APPENDIX

  Notes

  Epigraphs from Original Editions

  Dedications

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror

  Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Howl

  Author’s Cover Writ

  Index of Proper Names

  Notes

  Notes were composed 1961–1984 in collaboration with Fernanda Pivano, Italian translator; Jean-Jacques Lebel, Mary Beach and Claude Pelieu, Gérard-Georges Lemaire and Philippe Mikriammos, French translators; as well as Carl Weissner, Heiner Bastien, Bernd Samland, Jürgen Schmidt and Michael Kellner, German translators. Ever-patient confidante, guide, adviser and scholar Fernanda Pivano has borne the burden of pioneer interpretation of American personal and ephemeral references in these texts to her Italian readers, and other translators, for almost a quarter century. Musician-poet Steven Taylor integrated notes from four languages. The author edited and expanded the work through Summer 1984. Poet Philip Whalen, Sensei, aided interpretation of Buddhist terminology.

  A.G.

  I

  EMPTY MIRROR: GATES OF WRATH

  (1947–1952)

  The four poems that follow, dedicated to Neal Cassady in the first years of our friendship, were set among “Earlier Poems: 1947,” appended to Gates of Wrath, a book of rhymed verse. These compositions, college imitations of Marlowe, Marvell and Donne (and Har
t Crane), are now relocated among these notes. Subsequent poems of Summer 1948, also imitative in style, are placed with the main body of the collection because they deal with primary visionary experience.

  A FURTHER PROPOSAL

  Come live with me and be my love,

  And we will some old pleasures prove.

  Men like me have paid in verse

  This costly courtesy, or curse;

  But I would bargain with my art

  (As to the mind, now to the heart),

  My symbols, images, and signs

  Please me more outside these lines.

  For your share and recompense,

  You will be taught another sense:

  The wisdom of the subtle worm

  Will turn most perfect in your form.

  Not that your soul need tutored be

  By intellectual decree,

  But graces that the mind can share

  Will make you, as more wise, more fair,

  Till all the world’s devoted thought

  Find all in you it ever sought,

  And even I, of skeptic mind,

  A Resurrection of a kind.

  This compliment, in my own way,

  For what I would receive, I pay;

  Thus all the wise have writ thereof,

  And all the fair have been their love.

  1947

  A LOVER’S GARDEN

  How vainly lovers marvel, all

  To make a body, mind, and soul,

  Who, winning one white night of grace,

  Will weep and rage a year of days,

  Or muse forever on a kiss,

  If won by a more sad mistress—

  Are all these lovers, then, undone

  By him and me, who love alone?

  O, have the virtues of the mind

  Been all for this one love designed?

  As seconds on the clock do move,

  Each marks another thought of love;

  Thought follows thought, and we devise

  Each minute to antithesize,

  Till, as the hour chimes its tune,

  Dialectic, we commune.

  The argument our minds create

  We do, abed, substantiate;

  Nor we disdain, in our delight,

  To flatter the old Stagirite:

  For in one speedy moment, we

  Endure the whole Eternity,

  And in our darkened shapes have found

  The greater world that we surround.

  In this community, the soul

  Doth make its act impersonal,

  As, locked in a mechanic bliss,

  It shudders into nothingness—

  Three characters of each may die

  To dramatize that Unity.

  Timed, placed, and acting thus, the while,

  We sit and sing, and sing and smile.

  What life is this? What pleasure mine!

  Such as no image can insign:

  Nor sweet music, understood,

  Soft at night, in solitude

  At a window, will enwreathe

  Such stillness on my brow: I breathe,

  And walk on earth, and act my will,

  And cry Peace! Peace! and all is still.

  Though here, it seems, I must remain,

  My thoughtless world, whereon men strain

  Through lives of motion without sense,

  Farewell! in this benevolence—

  That all men may, as I, arrange

  A love as simple, sweet, and strange

  As few men know; nor can I tell,

  But only imitate farewell.

  1947

  LOVE LETTER

  Let not the sad perplexity

  Of absent love unhumor thee:

  Sighs, tears, and oaths, and laughter I have spent

  To make my play with thee resolve in merriment;

  For wisest critics past agree

  The truest love is comedy.

  Will thou not weary of the tragic argument?

  Wouldst thou make love perverse, and then

  Preposterous and crabbed, my pen?

  Tempt Eros not (he is more wise than I)

  To suck the apple of thy sad absurdity.

  Love, who is a friend to men,

  You’ld make a Devil of again:

  Then should I be once more exiled, alas, in thee.

  Make peace with me, and in my mind,

  With Eros, angel of the mind,

  Who loves me, loving thee, and in our bliss

  Is loved by all of us and finds his happiness.

  Such simple pleasures are designed

  To entertain our days, I find,

  And so shalt thee, when next we make a night of this.

  This spring we’ll be not merely mad,

  But absent lovers, therefore sad,

  So we’ll be no more happy than we ought—

  That simple love of Eros may be strangely taught.

  And wit will seldom make me glad

  That spring hath not what winter had,

  Therefore these nights are darkened shadows of my thought.

  Grieve in a garden, then, and in a summer’s twilight,

  Think of thy love, for spring is lost to me.

  Or as you will, and if the moon be white,

  Let all thy soul to music married be,

  To magic, nightingales, and immortality;

  And, if it pleases thee, why, think on Death;

  For Death is strange upon a summer night,

  The thought of it may make thee catch thy breath,

  And meditation hath itself a great beauty;

  Wherefore if thou must weep, now I must mourn with thee.

  Easter Sunday, 1947

  DAKAR DOLDRUMS

  I

  Most dear, and dearest at this moment most,

  Since this my love for thee is thus more free

  Than that I cherished more dear and lost;

  Most near, now nearest where I fly from thee:

  Thy love most consummated is in absence,

  Half for the trust I have for thee in mind,

  Half for the pleasures of thee in remembrance—

  Thou art most full and fair of all thy kind.

  Not half so fair as thee is fate I fear,

  Wherefore my sad departure from this season

  Wherein for some love of me thou held’st me dear,

  While I betray thee for a better reason.

  I am a brutish agonist, I know

  Lust or its consummation cannot ease

  These miseries of mind, this mask like sorrow:

  It is myself, not thee, shall make my peace.

  Yet, O sweet soul, to have possessed thy love,

  The meditations of thy mind for me,

  Hath half deceived a thought that ill shall prove.

  It was a grace of fate, this scene of comedy

  Foretold more tragic acts in my short age.

  Yet ’tis no masque of mine, no mere sad play

  Spectacular upon an empty stage—

  My life is more unreal, another way.

  To lie with thee, to touch thee with desire,

  Enrage the summer nights with thy mere presence—

  Flesh hath such joy, such sweetness, and such fire!

  The white ghost fell on me, departing thence.

  Henceforth I must perform a winter mood;

  Belovèd gestures freeze in bitter ice,

  Eyes glare through a pale jail of solitude,

  Fear chills my mind: Here endeth all my bliss!

  Cursed may be this month of Fall! I fail

  My full and fair and near and dear and kind.

  I but endure my role, my own seas sail,

  Far from the sunny shores within thy mind.

  So this departure shadoweth mine end:

  Ah! what poor human cometh unto me,

  Since now the snowy spectre doth descend,

  Henceforth I shall in fear and anger flee.

  II
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  Lord, forgive my passions, they are old,

  And restive as the years that I have known.

  To what abandonments have I foretold

  My bondage? And have mine own love undone!

  How mad my youth, my sacramental passage!

  Yet I dream these September journeys true:

  When five days flowed like sickness in this knowledge,

  I vomited out my mockery, all I knew.

  III

  Five nights upon the deep I suffered presage,

  Five dawns familiar seabirds cried me pale:

  I care not now, for I have seen an image

  In the sea that was no Nightingale.

  —My love, and doth still that rare figurine

  In thy sad garden sing, now I am gone?

  Sweet carols that I made, and caroller serene,

  They broke my heart, and sang for thee alone.

  Secret to thee the Nightingale was Death;

  So all the figures are that I create.

  For thee awhile I breathed another breath,

  To make my Death thy Beauty imitate.—

  More terrible than these are the vast visions

  Of the sea, nor comprehensible.

  Last night I stared upon the Cuban mountains,

  Tragic in the mist, as on my soul,

  Star studded in the dark, sea shaded round

  And still, a funeral of Emperors,

  Wind wound in ruined shrouds and crescent crowned

  And tombed in desolation on dead shores.

  The place was dread with age: the evening tide,

  Eternal wife of death that washed these bones,

  Turns back to sea by night, eternal bride:

  She clasped my ship and rocked to hear its groans.

  I did imagine I had known this sea,

  Had been an audience to this before;

  The place was prescient, like a great stage in me,

  As out of a dream that late I dream no more.

  I did imagine I had known this sea;

  It raged like a great beast in my passage,

  Till I, enragèd creature, anciently

  Engendered here, cried out upon mine image:

  “How long in absence O thou journeyest,

  Ages my soul and ages! Here ever home

  In this sea’s endangerments thou sufferest;