Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 8
appeared unalterable—
but now his fine thought’s vaguer
than my dream of him:
and only the crude skull figurement’s
gaunt insensible glare is left
with broken plumes of sensation,
headdresses of indecipherable intellect
scattered in the madness of oblivion
to holes and notes of elemental stone,
blind face of animal transcendency
over the sacred ruin of the world
dissolving into the sunless wall of a blackened room
on a time-rude pyramid rebuilt
in the bleak flat night of Yucatán
where I come with my own mad mind to study
alien hieroglyphs of Eternity.
A creak in the rooms scared me.
Some sort of bird, vampire or swallow,
flees with little paper wingflap
around the summit in its own air unconcerned
with the great stone tree I perch on.
Continual metallic
whirr of chicharras,
then lesser chirps
of cricket: 5 blasts
of the leg whistle.
The creak of an opening
door in the forest,
some sort of weird birdsong
or reptile croak.
My hat woven of henequen
on the stone floor
as a leaf on the waters,
as perishable;
my candle wavers continuously
and will go out.
Pale Uxmal,
unhistoric, like a dream,
Tulum shimmering on the coast in ruins;
Chichén Itzá naked
constructed on a plain;
Palenque, broken chapels in the green
basement of a mount;
lone Kabah by the highway;
Piedras Negras buried again
by dark archaeologists;
Yaxchilan
resurrected in the wild,
and all the limbo of Xbalba still unknown—
floors under roofcomb of branch,
foundation to ornament
tumbled to the flowers,
pyramids and stairways
raced with vine,
limestone corbels
down in the river of trees,
pillars and corridors
sunken under the flood of years:
Time’s slow wall overtopping
all that firmament of mind,
as if a shining waterfall of leaves and rain
were built down solid from the endless sky
through which no thought can pass.
A great red fat rooster
mounted on a tree stump
in the green afternoon,
the ego of the very fields,
screams in the holy sunlight!
—was looking back
with eyes shut to
where they crawled
like ants on brown old temples
building their minute ruins
and disappearing into the wild
leaving many mysteries
of deathly volition
to be divined.
I alone know the great crystal door
to the House of Night,
a legend of centuries
—I and a few Indians.
And had I mules and money I could find
the Cave of Amber
and the Cave of Gold
rumored of the cliffs of Tumbala.
I found the face of one
of the Nine Guardians of the Night
hidden in a mahogany hut
in the Area of Lost Souls
—first relic of kind for that place.
And I found as well a green leaf
shaped like a human heart;
but to whom shall I send this
anachronistic valentine?
Yet these ruins so much
woke me to nostalgia
for the classic stations
of the earth,
the ancient continent
I have not seen
and the few years
of memory left
before the ultimate night
of war—
As if these ruins were not enough,
as if man could go
no further before heaven
till he exhausted
the physical round
of his own mortality
in the obscure cities
hidden in the aging world
… the few actual
ecstatic conscious souls
certain to be found,
familiars …
returning after years
to my own scene
transfigured:
to hurry change
to hurry the years
bring me to my fate.
So I dream nightly of an embarkation,
captains, captains,
iron passageways, cabin lights,
Brooklyn across the waters,
the great dull boat, visitors, farewells,
the blurred vast sea—
one trip a lifetime’s loss or gain:
as Europe is my own imagination
—many shall see her,
many shall not—
though it’s only the old familiar world
and not some abstract mystical dream.
And in a moment of previsioning sleep
I see that continent in rain,
black streets, old night, a
fading monument…
And a long journey unaccomplished
yet, on antique seas
rolling in gray barren dunes under
the world’s waste of light
toward ports of childish geography
the rusty ship will
harbor in …
What nights might I not see
penniless among the Arab
mysteries of dirty towns around
the casbahs of the docks?
Clay paths, mud walls,
the smell of green cigarettes,
creosote and rank salt water—
dark structures overhead,
shapes of machinery and facade
of hull: and a bar lamp
burning in the wooden shack
across from the dim
mountain of sulphur on the pier.
Toward what city
will I travel? What wild houses
do I go to occupy?
What vagrant rooms and streets
and lights in the long night
urge my expectation? What genius
of sensation in ancient
halls? what jazz beyond jazz
in future blue saloons?
what love in the cafés of God?
I thought, five years ago
sitting in my apartment,
my eyes were opened for an hour
seeing in dreadful ecstasy
the motionless buildings
of New York rotting
under the tides of Heaven.
There is a god
dying in America
already created
in the imagination of men
made palpable
for adoration:
there is an inner
anterior image
of divinity
beckoning me out
to pilgrimage.
O future, unimaginable God.
Finca Tacalapan de San
Leandro, Palenque,
Chiapas, Mexico 1954–San Francisco 1955
II
Jump in time
to the immediate future,
another poem:
return to the old land
penniless and with
a disconnected manuscript,
the recollection of a few
sensations, beginning:
logboat down Río Michol
under
plantain
and drifting trees
to the railroad,
darkness on the sea
looking toward the stations
of the classic world—
another image descending
in white mist
down the lunar highway
at dawn, above
Lake Catemaco on the bus
—it woke me up—
the far away likeness
of a heavenly file
of female saints
stepping upward
on miniature arches
of a gold stairway
into the starry sky,
the thousands of little
saintesses in blue hoods
looking out at me
and beckoning:
SALVATION!
It’s true,
simple as in the image.
Then the mummies
in their Pantheon
at Guanajuato—
a city of Cortesian
mines in the first
crevasse of the Sierras,
where I rested—
for I longed to see their
faces before I left:
these weren’t mythical rock
images, tho stone
—limestone effigies out
of the grave, remains
of the fatal character—
newly resurrected,
grasping their bodies
with stiff arms, in soiled
funeral clothes;
twisted, knock-kneed,
like burning
screaming lawyers—
what hallucinations
of the nerves?—
indecipherable-sexed;
one death-man had
raised up his arms
to cover his eyes,
significant timeless
reflex in sepulchre:
apparitions of immortality
consumed inward,
waiting openmouthed
in the fireless darkness.
Nearby, stacked symmetrically,
a skullbone wall ending
the whitewashed corridor
under the graveyard
—foetid smell reminiscent
of sperm and drunkenness—
the skulls empty and fragile,
numerous as shells,
—so much life passed through
this town …
The problem is isolation
—there in the grave
or here in oblivion of light.
Of eternity we have
a numbered score of years
and fewer tender moments
—one moment of tenderness
and a year of intelligence
and nerves: one moment of pure
bodily tenderness—
I could dismiss Allen with grim
pleasure.
Reminder: I knelt in my room
on the patio at San Miguel
at the keyhole: 2 A.M.
The old woman lit a candle.
Two young men and their girls
waited before the portal,
news from the street. She
changed the linen, smiling.
What joy! The nakedness!
They dance! They talk
and simper before the door,
they lean on a leg,
hand on a hip, and posture,
nudity in their hearts,
they clap a hand to head
and whirl and enter,
pushing each other,
happily, happily,
to a moment of love… .
What solitude I’ve
finally inherited.
Afterward fifteen hours
on rubbled single lane,
broken bus rocking along
the maws and continental crags
of mountain afternoon,
the distant valleys fading,
regnant peaks beyond
to days on the Pacific
where I bathed—
then riding, fitful,
gazing, sleeping
through the desert
beside a wetback
sad-faced old-man-
youth, exhausted
to Mexicali
to stand
near one night’s dark shack
on the garbage cliffs
of bordertown overhanging
the tin house poor
man’s village below,
a last night’s
timewracked brooding
and farewell,
the end of a trip.
—Returning
armed with New Testament,
critic of horse and mule,
tanned and bearded
satisfying Whitman, concerned
with a few Traditions,
metrical, mystical, manly
… and certain characteristic flaws
—enough!
The nation over the border
grinds its arms and dreams
of war: I see
the fiery blue clash
of metal wheels
clanking in the industries
of night, and
detonation of infernal bombs
… and the silent downtown
of the States
in watery dusk submersion.
Guanajuato-Los Angeles, 1954
Song
The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.
Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human—
looks out of the heart
burning with purity—
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.
No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love—
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
—cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:
the weight is too heavy
—must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.
The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye—
yes, yes,
that’s what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.
San Jose, 1954
In back of the real
railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman’s shack.
A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
—the dread hay flower
I thought—It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus’ inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that’s been lying under
the garage for a year.
Yellow, yellow flower, and
flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World
San Jose, 1954
On Burroughs’ Work
The method must be purest meat
and no symbolic dressing,
actual visions & actual prisons
as seen then and now.
Prisons and visions presented
with rare descriptions
corresponding exactly to those
of Alcatraz and Rose.
A naked lunch is natural to us,
we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don’t hide the madness.
San Jose, 1954
Love Poem on Theme by Whitman
I’ll go into the bedroom silently and lie down between the bridegroom and the bride,
those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless,
arms resting over their eyes in the darkness,
bury my face in their shoulders and breasts, breathing their skin,
and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known,
legs raised up crook’d to receive, cock in the darkness driven tormented and attacking
roused up from hole to itching head,
bodies locked shuddering naked, hot hips and buttocks screwed into each other
and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon,
and moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs,
hands in moisture on softened hips, throbbing contraction of bellies
till the white come flow in the swirling sheets,
and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of passion and compassion,
and I rise up from the bed replenished with last intimate gestures and kisses of farewell—
all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened house
where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night,
nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.
San Jose, 1954
Drawing by Robert LaVigne, San Francisco, 1954
Over Kansas
Starting with eyeball kicks
on storefronts from bus window
on way to Oakland airport:
I am no ego
these are themselves
stained gray wood and gilded
nigger glass and barberpole