06-09-2021, 02:26 AM
short poem by Allen Ginsberg from his 1965 notebooks:
America is over
the world needs a new lover
So ladies & gentlemen relax
actually a long series, with 3rd line as refrain
unpublished poem from 1966:
Weep for the earth, scarred patched cancered in afternoon sunlight.
Red smoke pouring from tiny factories clinging to Peninsula’d Baltimore—
Smokestacks spiked myriad by green canals, patches of wood surviving
like mangy fur on reddish dogskin of the planet.
Rows of houses parked arithmetic in their limits,
warships cuddled in hundreds side by side inland at drydocks—
Zones of city traffic triangle near cloverland and footfate oval green
Man’s earth in greyish vapor, thru layer of gas shielding the cities,
and pure blue sky lined above, a higher horizon than earthman can see
except by roaring plane flight.
The crust of buildings Manhattan Wall to Empire spike
In smoke, Pulaski skyway to Newark
black toy’d over Kearney footways — home where I was born—
America is over
the world needs a new lover
So ladies & gentlemen relax
actually a long series, with 3rd line as refrain
unpublished poem from 1966:
Weep for the earth, scarred patched cancered in afternoon sunlight.
Red smoke pouring from tiny factories clinging to Peninsula’d Baltimore—
Smokestacks spiked myriad by green canals, patches of wood surviving
like mangy fur on reddish dogskin of the planet.
Rows of houses parked arithmetic in their limits,
warships cuddled in hundreds side by side inland at drydocks—
Zones of city traffic triangle near cloverland and footfate oval green
Man’s earth in greyish vapor, thru layer of gas shielding the cities,
and pure blue sky lined above, a higher horizon than earthman can see
except by roaring plane flight.
The crust of buildings Manhattan Wall to Empire spike
In smoke, Pulaski skyway to Newark
black toy’d over Kearney footways — home where I was born—