TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
Part I of Allen Ginsberg’s
Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg 1894 - 1956
I
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown
Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout
blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the
rhythm—and your memory in my head three years after—And read Adonais’
last triumphant stanzas aloud—wept, realizing how we suffer—
And how Death is
that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the
Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of Answers—and my own imagination of
a withered leaf—at dawn—
Dreaming back thru life, Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,
the final moment—the flower burning in the Day—and what comes after,
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed—
like a poem in the dark—escaped back to Oblivion—
No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all—longing or inevitability?—while it lasts, a Vision—anything more?
It leaps about
me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder, Seventh
Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shouldering each
other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant—and the sky
above—an old blue place.
or down the
Avenue to the south, to—as I walk toward the Lower East Side—where you
walked 50 years ago, little girl—from Russia, eating the first poisonous
tomatoes of America—frightened on the dock—
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?—toward Newark—
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards—
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream—what is this life?
Toward the Key in
the window—and the great Key lays its head of light on top of
Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the sidewalk—in a single
vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward the Yiddish Theater—and
the place of poverty
you knew, and I know, but without caring now—Strange to have moved
thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstoops doors and dark boys on the street, fire escapes old as you
-Tho you’re not old now, that’s left here with me—
Myself, anyhow,
maybe as old as the universe—and I guess that dies with us—enough to
cancel all that comes—What came is gone forever every time—
That’s good! That leaves it open for no regret—no fear radiators, lacklove, torture even toothache in the end—
Though while it
comes it is a lion that eats the soul—and the lamb, the soul, in us,
alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change’s fierce hunger—hair and
teeth—and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin,
braintricked Implacability.
Ai! ai! we do
worse! We are in a fix! And you’re out, Death let you out, Death had the
Mercy, you’re done with your century, done with God, done with the path
thru it—Done with yourself at last—Pure—Back to the Babe dark before
your Father, before us all—before the world—
There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you’ve gone, it’s good.
No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more fear of Louis,
and no more of
his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts, loves,
frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands—
No more of sister
Elanor,.—she gone before you—we kept it secret—you killed her—or she
killed herself to bear with you—an arthritic heart—But Death’s killed
you both—No matter—
Nor your memory
of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and weeks—forgetting,
aggrieve watching Marie Dressler address humanity, Chaplin dance in
youth,
or Boris Godunov,
Chaliapin’s at the Met, hailing his voice of a weeping Czar—by standing
room with Elanor & Max—watching also the Capitalists take seats in
Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,
with the YPSL’s
hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts pants,
photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and laughing
eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
all girls grown old, or dead, now, and that long hair in the grave—lucky to have husbands later—
You made it—I
came too—Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and will gream on
to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer—or kill—later
perhaps—soon he will think—)
And it’s the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now—tho not you
I didn’t foresee what you felt—what more hideous gape of bad mouth came first—to you—and were you prepared?
To go where? In
that Dark—that—in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the Void? Like an eye
in the black cloud in a dream? Adonoi at last, with you?
Beyond my
remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull in the
grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon—Deathshead with Halo?
can you believe it?
Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence, than none ever was?
Nothing beyond what we have—what you had—that so pitiful—yet Triumph,
to have been
here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower—fed to the ground—but
mad, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe, shaken, cut in
the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth wrapped,
sore—freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.
No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the knife—lost
Cut down by an
idiot Snowman’s icy—even in the Spring—strange ghost thought—some
Death—Sharp icicle in his hand—crowned with old roses—a dog for his
eyes—cock of a sweatshop—heart of electric irons.
All the
accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks, bodies, consciousness,
shoes, breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—‘Paranoia’ into hospitals.
You once kicked
Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later. You of stroke.
Asleep? within a year, the two of you, sisters in death. Is Elanor
happy?
Max grieves alive
in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over midnight
Accountings, not sure. l His life passes—as he sees—and what does he
doubt now? Still dream of making money, or that might have made money,
hired nurse, had children, found even your Immortality, Naomi?
I’ll see him soon. Now I’ve got to cut through—to talk to you—as I didn’t when you had a mouth.
Forever. And we’re bound for that, Forever—like Emily Dickinson’s horses—headed to the End.
They know the way—These Steeds—run faster than we think—it’s our own life they cross—and take with them.
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One
Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless, Father in death. Tho I
am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I’m hymnless, I’m
Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
This is the end,
the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for
All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping—page beyond Psalm—Last
change of mine and Naomi—to God’s perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy
phantoms!
