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.
