Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen. Страница 229
hundreds of millions shiver in the north
students rise at dawn and run around the soccerfield
Workmen sing songs in the dark to keep themselves warm
while I sleep late, smoke too much cough,
turn over in bed on my right side
pull the heavy quilt over my nose and go back
to visit the dead my father, mother and immortal
friends in dreams. Supper’s served me,
I can go out and banquet, but prefer
this week to stay in my room, recovering
a cough. I don’t have to sell persimmons on the streetcurb
in Baoding like the lady with white bandanna’d head
Don’t have to push my boat oars around a rocky corner
in the Yangtze gorges, or pole my way downstream
from Yichang through yellow industrial scum, or carry water
buckets on a bamboo pole over my shoulder
to a cabbage field near Wuxi—I’m famous,
my poems have done some men good
and a few women ill, perhaps the good
outweighs the bad, I’ll never know.
Still I feel guilty I haven’t done more;
True I praised the dharma from nation to nation
But my own practice has been amateur, seedy
—even I dream how bad a student I am—
My teacher’s tried to help me, but I seem
to be lazy and have taken advantage of money
and clothes my work’s brought me, today
I’ll stay in bed again & read old Chinese poets—
I don’t believe in an afterworld of god or even
another life separate from this incarnation
Still I worry I’ll be punished for my carelessness
after I’m dead—my poems scattered and my name
forgotten and my self reborn a foolish workman
freezing and breaking rocks on a roadside in Hebei.
Shanghai, December 5, 1984, 10 A.M.
II
“Ignorant and contentious” I spent lunch
arguing about boys making love with a student.
Still coughing, reclusive, I went back to bed
with a headache, despite afternoon sun
streaming through the French windows
weakly, to write down these thoughts.
Why’ve I wanted to appear heroic, why
strain to accomplish what no mortal could—
Heaven on earth, self perfection, household
security, & the accomplishment of changing the World.
A noble ambition, but that of a pathetic dreamer.
Tomorrow if I recover from bronchitis
I’ll put on a serious face and go down to the Market.
2:30 P.M.
III
Lying head on pillow aching
still reading poems of Tang roads
Something Bai said made me press my finger
to my eyes and weep—maybe his love
for an old poet friend, for I also
have gray on my cheek and bald head
and the Agricultural poet’s in the madhouse this week
a telegram told me, more historical
jackanapes maybe tragic maybe comic
I’ll know when I come home around the world.
Still with heavy heart and aching head I read on
till suddenly a cry from the garden reminded me
of a chicken, head chopped off running circles spurting blood
from its neck on farm yard dirt, I was eleven years old,
or the raptured scream of a rabbit—I put down my book
and listened carefully to the cry almost drowned
by the metal sound of cars and horns—It was a bird
repeating its ascending whistle, pipe notes burst
into a burble of joyful tones ending wildly
with variable trills in swift succession high and low
and high again. At least it wasn’t me, not my song,
a sound outside my mind, nothing to do with my aching brow.
3:30 P.M.
IV
I lay my cheek on the pillow to nap
and my thoughts floated against the stream
up to Zhong Xian west of the Three Gorges
where Bai Juyi was Governor.
“Two streams float together and meet further on
and mingle their water. Two birds fly upward
beneath the ninth month’s cold white cloud.
Two trees stand together bare branched
rooted in the same soil secretly touching.
Two apples hung from the same bough last
month and disappeared into the Market.”
So flowed my mind like the river, like the wind.
“Two thoughts have risen together in dream therefore
Two worlds will be one if I wake and write.”
So I lifted my head from my pillow and Woke
to find I was a sick guest in a vast poor kingdom
A famous visitor honored with a heated room,
medicines, special foods and learned visitors
inquiring when I’d be well enough to lecture my hosts
on the musics and poetics of the wealthy
Nation I had come from half way round the world
8:15 P.M.
V China Bronchitis