IV
REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE!
(1957–1959)

in one fold of the universe where Whitman was

and Blake and Shelley saw Milton dwelling as in a starry temple

brooding in his blindness seeing all—

Now at last I can speak to you beloved brothers of an unknown moon

real Yous squatting in whatever form amidst Platonic Vapors of Eternity

I am another Star.

Will you eat my poems or read them

or gaze with aluminum blind plates on sunless pages?

do you dream or translate & accept data with indifferent droopings of antennae?

do I make sense to your flowery green receptor eyesockets? do you have visions of God?

Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?

This is my rocket my personal rocket I send up my message Beyond

Someone to hear me there

My immortality

without steel or cobalt basalt or diamond gold or mercurial fire

without passports filing cabinets bits of paper warheads

without myself finally

pure thought

message all and everywhere the same

I send up my rocket to land on whatever planet awaits it

preferably religious sweet planets no money

fourth dimensional planets where Death shows movies

plants speak (courteously) of ancient physics and poetry itself is manufactured by the trees

the final Planet where the Great Brain of the Universe sits waiting for a poem to land in His golden pocket

joining the other notes mash-notes love-sighs complaints-musical shrieks of despair and the million unutterable thoughts of frogs

I send you my rocket of amazing chemical

more than my hair my sperm or the cells of my body

the speeding thought that flies upward with my desire as instantaneous as the universe and faster than light

and leave all other questions unfinished for the moment to turn back to sleep

in my dark bed on earth.

Amsterdam, October 4, 1957

the only bloodless revolution that gives away corn

poor Genet will illuminate the harvesters of Ohio

Marijuana is a benevolent narcotic but J. Edgar Hoover prefers his deathly scotch

And the heroin of Lao-Tze & the Sixth Patriarch is punished by the electric chair

but the poor sick junkies have nowhere to lay their heads

fiends in our government have invented a cold-turkey cure for addiction as obsolete as the Defense Early Warning Radar System.

I am the defense early warning radar system

I see nothing but bombs

I am not interested in preventing Asia from being Asia

and the governments of Russia and Asia will rise and fall but Asia and Russia will not fall

the government of America also will fall but how can America fall

I doubt if anyone will ever fall anymore except governments

fortunately all the governments will fall

the only ones which won’t fall are the good ones

and the good ones don’t yet exist

But they have to begin existing they exist in my poems

they exist in the death of the Russian and American governments

they exist in the death of Hart Crane & Mayakovsky

Now is the time for prophecy without death as a consequence

the universe will ultimately disappear

Hollywood will rot on the windmills of Eternity

Hollywood whose movies stick in the throat of God

Yes Hollywood will get what it deserves

Time

Seepage of nerve-gas over the radio

History will make this poem prophetic and its awful silliness a hideous spiritual music

I have the moan of doves and the feather of ecstasy

Man cannot long endure the hunger of the cannibal abstract

War is abstract

the world will be destroyed

but I will die only for poetry, that will save the world

Monument to Sacco & Vanzetti not yet financed to ennoble Boston

natives of Kenya tormented by idiot con-men from England

South Africa in the grip of the white fool

Vachel Lindsay Secretary of the Interior

Poe Secretary of Imagination

and Kra belongs to Kra, and Pukti to Pukti

crossfertilization of Blok and Artaud

Van Gogh’s Ear on the currency

no more propaganda for monsters

and poets should stay out of politics or become monsters

I have become monsterous with politics

the Russian poet undoubtedly monsterous in his secret notebook

Tibet should be left alone

These are obvious prophecies

America will be destroyed

Russian poets will struggle with Russia

Whitman warned against this “fabled Damned of nations”

Where was Theodore Roosevelt when he sent out ultimatums from his castle in Camden

Where was the House of Representatives when Crane read aloud from his prophetic books

What was Wall Street scheming when Lindsay announced the doom of Money

Were they listening to my ravings in the locker rooms of Bickfords Employment Offices?

Did they bend their ears to the moans of my soul when I struggled with market research statistics in the Forum at Rome?

No they were fighting in fiery offices, on carpets of heartfailure, screaming and bargaining with Destiny

fighting the Skeleton with sabers, muskets, buck teeth, indigestion, bombs of larceny, whoredom, rockets, pederasty,

back to the wall to build up their wives and apartments, lawns, suburbs, fairydoms,

Puerto Ricans crowded for massacre on 114th St. for the sake of an imitation Chinese-Moderne refrigerator

Elephants of mercy murdered for the sake of an Elizabethan birdcage

millions of agitated fanatics in the bughouse for the sake of the screaming soprano of industry

Money-chant of soapers—toothpaste apes in television sets—deodorizers on hypnotic chairs—

petroleum mongers in Texas—jet plane streaks among the clouds—

sky writers liars in the face of Divinity—fanged butchers of hats and shoes, all Owners! Owners! Owners! with obsession on property and vanishing Selfhood!

and their long editorials on the fence of the screaming negro attacked by ants crawled out of the front page!

Money! Money! Money! shrieking mad celestial money of illusion! Money made of nothing, starvation, suicide! Money of failure! Money of death!

Money against Eternity! and eternity’s strong mills grind out vast paper of Illusion!

Paris, December 1957

Bony China hungers brain
wash over power dam and
America hides mad meat
in refrigerator Britain
cooks Jerusalem too long
France eats oil and dead
salad arms & legs in Africa
loudmouth devours Arabia
negro and white warring
against the golden nuptial
Russia manufacture feeds
millions but no drunk can
dream Mayakovsky’s suicide
rainbow over machinery
and backtalk to the sun

Paris, February 29, 1958

He didn’t eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten face stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had nightmares

Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion’s flophouse circus,

I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor—‘Terrible Presence!’ I cried ‘Eat me or die!’

It got up that afternoon—walked to the door with its paw on the wall to steady its trembling body

Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth

thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in Mexico

Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice “Not this time Baby—but I will be back again.”

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger

Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the Universe how am I chosen

In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served

Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your Mercy.

Paris, March 1958

last moments gasping stricken blood under stars coughing intestines & lighted highway cars flowing past his eyes into the dark.

Joe Army’s beauty forgotten that night, pain cops nightmare, drunken AWOL through Detroit

phonecalls angels backrooms & courtsmartial lawyers trains a kaleidoscope of instant change,

shrinkage of soul, bearded dead dreams, all Balzac read in jail,

late disappearance from the city hides metamorphosis to humancy loathing that deathscene.

Phil Black hung in Tombs, horsefaced junky, dreamy strange murderer, forgotten pistol three buck holdup, stoolpigeon suicide I save him from the grave

Iroquois his indian head red cock intelligence buried in miserous solitaire politics

his narcissistic blond haired hooknosed pride, I made him once he groaned and came

Later stranger chill made me tremble, I loved him hopeless years,

he’s hid in Seattle consumed by lesbian hypochondrias’ stealthy communion, green bullfighters envy age,

unless I save him from the grave, but he won’t talk no more

much less fall in my arms or any mental bed forgiveness before we climb Olympics death

Leroi returning to bughouse monkishness & drear stinky soupdish his fatness fright & suffering mind insult a repetitious void

“I have done my best to make saintliness as uninteresting as possible”

and has succeeded, when did I last write or receive ambiguous message joky hangdog prophetic spade

Joan in dreams bent forward smiling asks news of the living

as in life the same sad tolerance, no skullbone judge of drunks

asking whereabouts sending regards from Mexican paradise garden where life & death are one

as if a postcard from eternity sent with human hand, wish I could see you now, it’s happening as should

yet died early-old teeth gone, tequila bottle in hand, an infantile paralysis limp, lacklove, the worst—

I dreamed such vision of her secret in my frisco bed, heart can live the rest by my, or her, best desire—love

Bill King black haired sorry drunken wop lawyer, woke up trembling in Connecticut DT’s among cows

Him there to recover I guess, but made his way back to New York shuddering to fuck stiff Time girls,

Death charm in person, sexual childlike radiant pain

See his face in old photographs & bandaged naked wrist leaning melancholy contemplating the camera

awkward face now calm, kind to me in cafeteria one sober morn looking for jobs at breakfast,

but mostly smiled at roof edge midnight, all 1920s elegance reincarnate in black vomit bestriven suit

& screechy records Mahagonny airplane crash, lushed young man of 1940s hated his fairy woe, came on Lizzie’s belly or Ansen’s sock in desperate orgies of music canopener

God but I loved his murdered face when he talked with a mouthful of rain in 14th St subway—

where he fell skull broken underground last, head crushed by the radiant wheel on iron track at Astor Place

Farewell dear Bill that’s done, you’re gone, we all go into the ancient void drunkard mouth

you made it too soon, here was more to say, & more to drink, but now too late to sit and talk

all night toward the eternity you sought so well so fearlessly in so much alcoholic pain with so much fire behind eyes with such

sweet manner in your heart that never won a happy fate thru what bleak years you saw your red skull burning deathshead in the U.S. sun

Mix living dead, Neal Cassady, old hero of travel love alyosha idiot seek-train poems, what crown you wear at last

what fameless reward for patience & pain, what golden whore come secret from the clouds, what has god bidden for your coffin and heart someday,

what will give back your famous arm, your happy catholic boy eye, orphan torso shining in poolhall & library, intimate spermworks with old girls downtown rockabelly energy,

what American heaven receive you? Christ allow sufferings then will he allow you His opening tinbarrel Iowa light as Jerusalem?

O Neal that life end we together on knees know harvest of prayers together,

Paradise autos ascend to the moon no illusion, short time earth life Bibles bear our eyes, make it dear baby

Stay with me Angel now in Shroud of railroad lost bet racetrack broke leg

oblivion

till I get the shining Word or you the cockless cock to lay in my ass hope mental radiance—

It’s all lost we fall without glory to empty tomb comedown to nothing but evil thinkless worm, but we know better

merely by old heart hope, or merely Desire, or merely the love whisper breathed in your ear on lawns of long gone by Denver,

merely by the night you leaned on my body & held me for All & called me to Adore what I wondered at as child age ten I

wandered by hopeless green hedges, when you sat under alley balcony garbagestair, ache in our breasts Futurity

meeting Love for Love, so wept as child now man I weep for true end,

Save from the grave! O Neal I love you I bring this Lamb into the middle of the world happily—O tenderness—to see you again—O tenderness—to recognize you in the middle of Time.

Paris, Spring 1958

issue new series of images oceanic haikus blue taxicabs in Moscow negro statues of Buddha

pray for me on the phonograph record of your former existence

with a long sad voice and strophes of deep sweet music sad and scratchy as World War I

I’ve eaten the blue carrots you sent out of the grave and Van Gogh’s ear and maniac peyote of Artaud

and will walk down the streets of New York in the black cloak of French poetry

improvising our conversation in Paris at Père Lachaise

and the future poem that takes its inspiration from the light bleeding into your grave

II

Here in Paris I am your guest O friendly shade

the absent hand of Max Jacob

Picasso in youth bearing me a tube of Mediterranean

myself attending Rousseau’s old red banquet I ate his violin

great party at the Bateau Lavoir not mentioned in the textbooks of Algeria

Tzara in the Bois de Boulogne explaining the alchemy of the machineguns of the cuckoos

he weeps translating me into Swedish

well dressed in a violet tie and black pants

a sweet purple beard which emerged from his face like the moss hanging from the walls of Anarchism

he spoke endlessly of his quarrels with André Breton

whom he had helped one day trim his golden mustache

old Blaise Cendrars received me into his study and spoke wearily of the enormous length of Siberia

Jacques Vaché invited me to inspect his terrible collection of pistols

poor Cocteau saddened by the once marvelous Radiguet at his last thought I fainted

Rigaut with a letter of introduction to Death

and Gide praised the telephone and other remarkable inventions

we agreed in principle though he gossiped of lavender underwear

but for all that he drank deeply of the grass of Whitman and was intrigued by all lovers named Colorado

princes of America arriving with their armfuls of shrapnel and baseball

Oh Guillaume the world so easy to fight seemed so easy

did you know the great political classicists would invade Montparnasse

with not one sprig of prophetic laurel to green their foreheads

III

Came back sat on a tomb and stared at your rough menhir

a piece of thin granite like an unfinished phallus

a cross fading into the rock 2 poems on the stone one Coeur Renversée

other Habituez-vous comme moi A ces prodiges que j’annonce Guillaume Apollinaire de Kostrowitsky

someone placed a jam bottle filled with daisies and a 5&10¢ surrealist typist ceramic rose

happy little tomb with flowers and overturned heart

under a fine mossy tree beneath which I sat snaky trunk

summer boughs and leaves umbrella over the menhir and nobody there

Et quelle voix sinistre ulule Guillaume qu’es-tu devenu

his nextdoor neighbor is a tree

there underneath the crossed bones heaped and yellow cranium perhaps

and the printed poems Alcools in my pocket his voice in the museum

Now middleage footsteps walk the gravel

a man stares at the name and moves toward the crematory building

same sky rolls over thru clouds as Mediterranean days on the Riviera during war

drinking Apollo in love eating occasional opium he’d taken the light

One must have felt the shock in St. Germain when he went out Jacob & Picasso coughing in the dark

a bandage unrolled and the skull left still on a bed outstretched pudgy fingers the mystery and ego gone

a bell tolls in the steeple down the street birds warble in the chestnut trees

Famille Bremont sleeps nearby Christ hangs big chested and sexy in their tomb

my cigarette smokes in my lap and fills the page with smoke and flames

an ant runs over my corduroy sleeve the tree I lean on grows slowly

bushes and branches upstarting through the tombs one silky spiderweb gleaming on granite

I am buried here and sit by my grave beneath a tree

Paris, Winter-Spring 1958

Hitler is dead and Liveright’s gone out of business
The Attic of the Past and Everlasting Minute are out of print
          Uncle Harry sold his last silk stocking
     Claire quit interpretive dancing school
          Buba sits a wrinkled monument in Old
               Ladies Home blinking at new babies

last time I saw you was the hospital
     pale skull protruding under ashen skin
          blue veined unconscious girl
               in an oxygen tent
     the war in Spain has ended long ago
               Aunt Rose

Paris, June 1958

nostalgia of the first touch of those coins, American change,

the memory in my aging hand, the same old silver reflective there,

the thin dime hidden between my thumb and forefinger

All the struggles for those coins, the sadness of their reappearance

my reappearance on those fabled shores

and the failure of that Dream, that Vision of Money reduced to this haunting recollection

of the gas lot in Paterson where I found half a dollar gleaming in the grass—

   I have a $5 bill in my pocket—it’s Lincoln’s sour black head moled wrinkled, forelocked too, big eared, flags of announcement flying over the bill, stamps in green and spiderweb black,

long numbers in racetrack green, immense promise, a girl, a hotel, a busride to Albany, a night of brilliant drunk in some faraway corner of Manhattan

a stick of several teas, or paper or cap of Heroin, or a $5 strange present to the blind.

Money money, reminder, I might as well write poems to you—dear American money—O statue of Liberty I ride enfolded in money in my mind to you—and last

   Ahhh! Washington again, on the Dollar, same poetic black print, dark words, The United States of America, innumerable numbers

R956422481 One Dollar This Certificate is Legal Tender (tender!) for all debts public and private

My God My God why have you forsaken me

Ivy Baker Priest Series 1953 F

and over, the Eagle, wild wings outspread, halo of the Stars encircled by puffs of smoke & flame—

a circle the Masonic Pyramid, the sacred Swedenborgian Dollar

America, bricked up to the top, & floating surreal above

the triangle of holy outstaring Eye sectioned out of the aire, shining

light emitted from the eyebrowless triangle—and a desert of cactus, scattered all around, clouds afar,

this being the Great Seal of our Passion, Annuit Coeptis, Novus Ordo Seclorum,

the whole surrounded by green spiderwebs designed by T-Men to prevent foul counterfeit—

ONE

S.S. United States, July 1958

The many worlds that don’t exist
all which seem real
all joke
all lost cartoon

At that moment the whole goofy-spooky of the Universe WHAT?! Joke Being slips into Nothing like the tail of a lizard disappearing into a crack in the Wall with the final receding eyehole ending Loony Tunes accompanied by Woody Woodpecker’s hindoo maniac laughter in the skull. Nobody gets hurt. They all disappear. They were never there. Beginningless perfection.

That’s why Satori’s accompanied by laughter
and the Zenmaster rips up the Sutras in fury.

And the pain of this contrariety
The cycles of scream and laughter
faces and asses Christs and Buddhas
each with his own universe dragged
over the snowy mental poles
like a sack mad Santa Clauses
Worst pain in the dentist’s chair comes true
novocaine also arrives in the cycle
every hap will have its chance
even God will come Once or Twice
Satan will be my personal enemy

Relax and die—
The process will repeat itself
Be Born! Be Born!
Back to the same old smiling
               dentist—

I’m disgusted! it’s Unbelievable!
     What a funny horrible
          dirty joke!
     The whole universe a shaggy dog story!
          with a weird ending that begins again
            till you get the point
‘It was a dark and gloomy night…’
     ‘in every direction in and
          out’
            ‘You take the high road
   and I’ll take the low’
                    —everybody lost
in Scotlands of mind-consciousness—

          Adonoi Echad!
It is not One, but Two,
     not two but Infinite—
the universe be born and die
     in endless series in the mind!

Gary Snyder, Jack, Zen thinkers,
     split open existence
     and laugh & Cry—
what’s shock? what’s measure?
     when the Mind’s an irrational
        traffic light in
               Gobi—
follow the blinking lights of contrariety!

O waves of probable
     and improbable
Universes—
     Everybody’s right

I’ll finish this poem
     in my next life.

II

…….with eye opening
slowly to perceive
that I be coming out
     of a trance—
one look at the lipstick
     it’s a nurse
in a dentist’s office

     that first frog
thought leaping out of
     the void

     … a glimpse
out of which the whole
process unfolds this
universe & logically
and symmetrically next
unbuilds it in exact
reverse till you arrive
back at the Nothing
in which one chance
note was originally
struck…

—the same man
crossing the street looking
both ways watch out for
the cars—

and each time, returning
with a jerk of the face
(p’raps a dental touch)
dictated by the sinking
sensation, Oof! I’ve
been hoodwinked—

          again like
     someone in the Circus
defying death, got thrown
     into the orchestra—
          Note the music blaring
with an indifferent flourish of Triumph
          a nightmare Razz
     —as the acrobat leaps
out into the void—

Me! I made that Last Chance
     jump off the wire
way high up in the Big Top
     long ago …
          it’s happening again!

I wake up dazed …

III

A nice day in the Universe on Broad Street—sun shines today as it never shone before and never will again—stillness in the blue sky—the church’s gold dome across the park sending and receiving flashes of light—I feel heartsick to destroy this all—

What hope have the children in their prams passing the white silent doors of the houses—only the Public Library knows.

   Premonition in the dentist’s chair—mechanical voices over the radio singing Destination Moon—mysterious sorrow for the moon of this forgotten universe—humans, singing, singing—of the moon—for money?—except it’s the imbecilic canned voice of eternity rocking & rolling in Space making invisible announcements—

The Doc’s agreed to the experiment—novocaine, my mouth’s begun to disappear first—like the Cheshire Cat.

BACK: Endless cycles of conflict happening in nothingness
make it impossible to grasp for the perfection
which does not exist
but is not necessary
so everything is final and occurs over & over again
till we will finally blank out as expected.

          The First Note of Creation:
the only one there could be if there
weren’t nothing but
an idea that there might
not be nothing—

I take my pen in hand
The same old way sings Sinatra
I’m writing to You give me understanding
I pray sings Sinatra
Can I never glimpse the round we have made?
Write me as soon as able sings Sinatra
O Lord burn me out of existence.

You’ve got a long body sings Sinatra
I refuse to breathe and return to form
I’ve seen every moment in advance before
I’ve turned my neck a million times
          & written this note
     & been greeted with fire and cheers
I refuse to stop
          —thinking—
     What Perfection has escaped me?

An endless cycle of possibilities clashing in Nothing
with each mistake in the writing inevitable from the beginning of time
The doctor’s phone number is Pilgrim 1–0000
Are you calling me, Nothing?

My bus will arrive as foretold
it’s the end of another September
war is on the radio ahead
we are all going to the inevitable beauty of doom
a firebox stands sentient before the library
it’s hot sun now I’m crazy scribbling
—It began abstract and mindless nowhere
planets of thought have passed
it’ll end where it began

I want to return to normal
—but there is no changelessness
but in Nirvana
          Or is there
Ever Rest, Lord?—and what sages
know and sit.
          I’m a spy
in Bloomfield on a park bench
     —frightened by buses—

What’s that bee doing hanging round my shoe? my borrowed and inevitable shoe?

A vast red truck moving with boxes of dead television sets in the back

American flag waving over the library

On the bus I sit by a negress

This is an explosion

IV

          … under a tree
that sleeps all winter
     till it grows its eyes
          in May heat
and flowers upward with a thousand
          green sensations
dies, and forgets itself in Snow

     … Phantom in Phantom

If we didn’t exist, God
would have to create this
     to leave no room for complaint
          by any of the birds & bees
who might have missed their
          chance (to be)

     Fate tells big lies.

     … And the big kind Dreamer
is on the nod again
          God sleeps!
He’s in for a big surprise
one of his dreams is going to come true
     He’ll get the answer too
     He’ll get the answer too

Just a flash in the cosmic pan
—just an instant when there
          might have been a light
     had there been any pan
               to reflect it—

—we can lie on the bed and imagine
     ourselves away—

V

The pain of gas flowing into the eye
the crooked tooth-drills hanging like gallows
          on a miniature Jupiter
Thru the open window, spring frozen
          in the young tree
the repeated bong of the doorbell
          opening elsewhere
I’ve come back to the same medicine
     cabinet in the universe—Bong,
I know I’m more real than the dentist!
a serious embarrassment, having grasped to one Self
though admittedly I’d seen it disappear
          over and over

TRACKLESS TRANSIT CORPORATION

runs a bus thru Bloomfield
     … blossoming
in the bottom of an unborn daisy
it will vanish into the Whist-not

History will keep repeating
itself forever like the woman
in the image on the Dutch Cleanser box

A way out of the mirror
     was found by the image
that realized its existence
     was only …
a stranger completely like myself

At my feet an ant crawling
          in the broken asphalt—
and this exact white lollipop stick
          & twig of branch
lain next to that soggy match
     near those few grassblades …
and I’ve sat here and took this note
     before and tried to remember—
and now I do—remember what
I’m writing as I write it down
I know when I’m going to stop
I know when I’m forgetting and
know when I
          take a jump and change—
               Impossible
to do anything but right now in all
     the universe at once—
          which Art does, and
the Insight of Laughing Gas?

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
and the monk laughs
at the moon—
and everybody 10 miles round
in all directions wonders
why—he’s just reminding
them—of what—of
the moon, the old dumb moon
of a million lives.

New York, Fall 1958

Confused by the spectacle around me,
     Man struggling up the street
          with packages, newspapers,
                    ties, beautiful suits
          toward his desire
     Man, woman, streaming over the pavements
          red lights clocking hurried watches &
               movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading
     so crosswise, honking, lengthily,
               by avenues
     stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums
               thru such halting traffic
                    screaming cars and engines
so painfully to this
     countryside, this graveyard
          this stillness
                    on deathbed or mountain
     once seen
               never regained or desired
                    in the mind to come
where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.

New York, October 1958

reborn a bearded humming Jew of Arabian mournful jokes

man with a star on his forehead and halo over his cranium

listening to music musing happy at the fall of a leaf the moonlight of immortality in his hair

table-hopping most elegant comrade of all most delicate mannered in the Sufi court

he wasn’t even there at all

wearing zodiacal blue sleeves and the long peaked conehat of a magician

harkening to the silence of a well at midnight under a red star

in the lobby of Rockefeller Center attentive courteous bare-eyed enthusiastic with or without pants

he listens to jazz as if he were a negro afflicted with jewish melancholy and white divinity

Ignu’s a natural you can see it when he pays the cabfare abstracted

pulling off the money from an impossible saintly roll

or counting his disappearing pennies to give to the strange busdriver whom he admires

Ignu has sought you out he’s the seeker of God

and God breaks down the world for him every ten years

he sees lightning flash in empty daylight when the sky is blue

he hears Blake’s disembodied Voice recite the Sunflower in a room in Harlem

No woe on him surrounded by 700 thousand mad scholars moths fly out of his sleeve

He wants to die give up go mad break through into Eternity

live on and teach an aged saint or break down to an eyebrow clown

All ignus know each other in a moment’s talk and measure each other up at once

as lifetime friends romantic winks and giggles across continents

sad moment paying the cab goodbye and speeding away uptown

One or two grim ignus in the pack

one laughing monk in dungarees

one delighted by cracking his eggs in an egg cup

one chews gum to music all night long rock and roll

one anthropologist cuckoo in the Petén rainforest

one sits in jail all year and bets karmaic racetrack

one chases girls down East Broadway into the horror movie

one pulls out withered grapes and rotten onions from his pants

one has a nannygoat under his bed to amuse visitors plasters the wall with his crap

That would set fire to America but none of these make ignu

it’s the soul that makes the style the tender firecracker of his thought

the amity of letters from strange cities to old friends

and the new radiance of morning on a foreign bed

A comedy of personal being his grubby divinity

Eliot probably an ignu one of the few who’s funny when he eats

Williams of Paterson a dying American ignu

Burroughs a purest ignu his haircut is a cream his left finger

pinkie chopped off for early ignu reasons metaphysical spells love spells with psychoanalysts

his very junkhood an accomplishment beyond a million dollars

Céline himself an old ignu over prose

I saw him in Paris dirty old gentleman of ratty talk

with longhaired cough three wormy sweaters round his neck

brown mould under historic fingernails

pure genius his giving morphine all night to 1400 passengers on a sinking ship

‘because they were all getting emotional’

Who’s amazing you is ignu communicate with me

by mail post telegraph phone street accusation or scratching at my window

and send me a true sign I’ll reply special delivery

DEATH IS A LETTER THAT WAS NEVER SENT

Knowledge born of stamps words coins pricks jails seasons sweet ambition laughing gas

history with a gold halo photographs of the sea painting a celestial din in the

bright window

one eye in a black cloud

and the lone vulture on a sand plain seen from the window of a Turkish bus

It must be a trick. Two diamonds in the hand one Poetry one Charity

proves we have dreamed and the long sword of intelligence

over which I constantly stumble like my pants at the age six—embarrassed.

New York, November 1958