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”
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, Marvel
l and Donne (and Hart 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
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;