Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen. Страница 113

Open your eyes and stars

                    are back where they were.

      And Dr. Louria committed suicide,

                    accused of abortion,

                         that sensitive man.

      Well gimme yr piece of perspective

          for use in the slotmachine marketplace future—

          You hafta get permission down in

      Freehold New Jersey to see Tibetan Monks.

          You hafta get permission.

      The magic formula’s printed on the back of yr chair Lady,

                         yr going to be the most important illuminator

                                        since Dr. Johnson?

                              And Huncke suffers rejection,

                                        contrariety of others.

               “Reform U.S. Government stinks detail,”

               like, congratulations Whitey, you’ll go far

                                        in yr black Maria, right?

A public meeting in my head,

                              way back on River Street.

Morning, crossing New Mexico border

      massive cliff waves

               in mid-earth America—A blessing

these sandstone organpipes under the shimmering consciousness of LSD.

      Defiance, Wingate, Red Cliffs, Thoreau,

      Indian Gallup ahead,

      ran by here with Peter in the white bus once

level everywhere, fenced, flat

          to Texas horizon gray-fleeced with cloud haze,

          where Gemini men walked space that day—

And ninety-nine soldiers piled on the train at Amarillo—

      Hadn’t read the paper four weeks

                    training Air Force

                    Pneumohydraulics—

Ninety-nine soldiers entering the train

                    and all so friendly

               Only a month

                    hair clipped & insulted

      They weren’t too sad,

      glad going to some electronics field near Chicago

      —Been taking courses in Propaganda,

      How not to believe what they were told

                         by the enemy,

      Young fellas that some of them had long hair

               before they came to the heated camp

               friendly, over hamburgers

                         Volunteered

      assignments behind the line of Great Machines

                         that drop Napalm,

      milking

                         the Calf of Gold.

      Three months from now

                         Vietnam, they said.

Walking the length of the train,

      Lounge Car with Time Magazine

               Amarillo Globe, US News & World Report

          Reader’s Digest Coronet Universal Railroad Schedule,

               everyone on the same track,

                    bound leatherette read on sofas,

               America heartland passing flat

                    trees rising in night—

      Dining Car

                    negro waiters negro porters

          negro sandwichmen negro bartenders white jacketed

          kindly old big-assed Gents half bald,

      Going, sir, California to Chicago

                         feeding the Soldiers.

          Blue eyed children climbing chair backs

               staring at my beard, gay.

A consensus around card table beer—

      “It’s my country,

          better fight ’em over there than here,”

      afraid to say “No it’s crazy

          everybody’s insane—

               This country’s Wrong,

          the Universe, Illusion.”

      Soldiers gathered round

          saying—“my country

and they say I gotta fight,

      I have no choice,

          we’re in it too deep to pull out,

                              if we lose,

      there’s no stopping the Chinese communists,

      We’re fightin the communists, aren’t we?

          Isn’t that what it’s about?”

Flatland,

      emptiness,

          ninety nine soldiers graduated Basic Training

                              eating hamburgers—

          “you learn to eat fast

          you learn to be insulted without caring

          you gotta do what your country expects—”

      even the bright talkative orphan farm boy

      whose auto parts father wanted ’im to grow up military

      “almost et by a male hog up to his shoulders”