War is no longer declared,
only continued. The monstrous
has become everyday. The hero
stays away from battle. The weak
have gone to the front.
The uniform of the day is patience,
its medal the pitiful star of hope above the heart.
The medal is awarded
when nothing more happens,
when the artillery falls silent,
when the enemy has grown invisible
and the shadow of eternal armament
covers the sky.
It is awarded
for desertion of the flag,
for bravery in the face of friends,
for the betrayal of unworthy secrets
and the disregard
of every command.
Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the fields in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh--
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched one stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh--
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there--
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve--
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
Granny sat drinking a bourbon and branch water
by the picture window. It was early evening and she
had finished the dinner dishes and put them away and
now it was her time to do as she pleased. "All my
children are going to hell, and my grandchildren, too,"
she said to me, one of her children. She took a long
slug of her drink and sighed. One of her eyes was all
washed out, the result of some kind of dueling accident
in her youth. That and the three black hairs on her
chin which she refused to cut kept the grandchildren
at a certain distance. "Be a sweetheart and get me
another drink, would you, darling?" I make her a really
strong one. "I miss the War, I really do. But your
granddaddy was such a miserable little chickenshit he
managed to come back alive. Can you imagine that? And
him wearing all those medals, what a joke! And so I
had to kill him, I had no choice. I poisoned the son
of a bitch and got away with it. And so I ask you, who's
the real hero?" "You are, Granny, " I said, knowing I was
going to hell if only to watch her turn to stone.
Trench letters do get used
eventually for poetry you
long history of nihilism
Get ready to advance don't
everyone rattle camouflage
as if we are nothing only
company dive-bomb anxiety
A few persistent "islands"
of half inaudible whispers
jabbing the radioman Lethe
Photographs are very like
crossing the no-sail zone
Periscopes screens filters
no unused boots with me I
come home my dear mother he
wrote such harks each amok
embrasure an outlook bunker
I can fact the world-facts
go burrowing after statistics
Realism all that fantasia
The hark of his attention
has no battle-dreams now
nor severe astasia-abasia
nor possible peace negotiation
nor newsreel shots crossing
to our civilian situation
nerves are in perfect order
Sea-drift the cry ice-floe
he is out with his wiring-party
Meantime incendiary weapons
Among the level down
go crash men flitting
Where are you whine shells
Scatter I see sentries
Up to the neck in war
O patiently people being
blown to bits one hand
clutching bandages next
bit *Proverbs* and byword
Language of escalation
this pun assembles down
Nominated as President by
dream-consciousness a cup
and saucer dream in three
collated lectures signed
by Amundsen saying he did
reach the Pole an aftermath
of fatigue postwar period
from its own wreck spoil
Before in the Dardanelles
taking off Sam Browne belt
Might solve sleeplessness
thus in my own Presidency
To be brief Kant's theory of
long run wars to hysteria
shock and projectile cycle
viz mimetic character until
a day is filled with night
night with doubt with doubt
Tense armies immemorial soil
reverberation of artillery
I equate will and instinct
with the other plot Europe
Cold marches with soldiers
abreast you cold Predicate
what happened to me.
it isn't only this war in vietnam.
it's the war of my blood,
the small wars in immaculate labs,
the war of children in the flesh of assaba,
the wars in cosmos over the heads of philosophers.
death, magnetic void of my balance,
beloved one of my sanity,
your silk shoes are soft in the dreams of my brothers.
you finish the milk in the glass
of the rebellious husband
and give sleep to his pain-ridden mate.
don't touch me,
i am your holy mouth
I
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
Who do we bomb?
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
You bomb! You bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb them!
What do we do?
We bomb! We bomb them!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
We bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
Whom bomb?
You bomb you!
( May 1971)
II
Why bomb?
We don't want to bomb!
Why bomb?
We don't want to bomb!
Why bomb?
You don't want to bomb!
Why bomb?
You don't want to bomb!
Who said bomb?
Who said we had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said we had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you had to bomb?
Who said bomb?
Who said you had to bomb?
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
We don't bomb!
( for Don Cherry and Elvin Jones
New York, June 16, 1984)
III
Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon does the job
Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Armageddon for the mob
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog & Magog Gog & Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Gog Magog Gog Magog
Ginsberg says Gog & Magog
Armageddon did the job.
( February - June 1991 )
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade :
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives ;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god :
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave ;
Analysed them all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief :
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse :
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream ;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day :
The lights must never go out
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home ;
Lest we should see where we are
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish :
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart ;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow ;
I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work.
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game :
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the unfolded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky :
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone ;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police ;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies ;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic flashes of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages :
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Not the expression of collective emotion
Imperfectly reflected in the daily papers.
Where is the point at which the merely individual
Explosion breaks
In the path of an action merely typical
To create the universal, originate a symbol
Out of the impact -- This is a meeting
On which we attend
Of forces beyond control by experiment --
Of Nature and the Spirit. Mostly the individual
Experience is too large, or too small. Our emotions
Are only 'incidents'
In the effort to keep day and night together.
It seems just possible that a poem might happen
To a very young man : but a poem is not poetry --
That is a life.
War is not a life : it is a situation ;
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted,
A problem to be met with ambush and stratagem,
Enveloped or scattered.
The enduring is not a substitute for the transient,
Neither one for the other. But the abstract conception
Of private experience at its greatest intensity
Becoming universal, which we call 'poetry',
May be affirmed in verse.
O heart
sorrowing
for this lad
once scared of a stick
lifted in mock anger
when he refused
a drink of milk,
now
not content with killing
war elephants
with spotted trunks,
this son
of the strong man who fell yesterday
seems unaware of the arrow
in his wound,
his head of hair is plumed
like a horse's,
he has fallen
on his shield,
his beard still soft.
We, the povo,
have been taught
the crack of a gun
shall not be dreaded:
its echo
is freedom
but
we are not told
an echo is a distant sound
that dies out soon
afterwards
I lean on the wall
still hot
from a long fire,
no villagers
no foe around,
the ground gives way,
the universe crumbles,
the stars perish.
A sudden ripple
of the scent of violets.
I begin to listen
to tender voices,
the grass rising
for new footsteps,
the ashes embracing
a new solidity.
A brook clatters
into a stone trough
a cat returns
to a scorched doorstep.
I grow larger
become a giant,
now I see over
the shoulder of all horror.
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.
ALL night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down.
Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.
Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,
certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed
like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.
To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well
with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue,
daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons.
Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches
more lightly than birds alert for flight,
lifted the sunken heart
even against its will.
But not
as symbols of hope: they were flimsy
as our resistance to the crimes committed
--again, again--in our name; and yes, they return,
year after year, and yes, they briefly shone with serene joy
over against the dark glare
of evil days. They are, and their presence
is quietness ineffable--and the bombings are, were,
no doubt will be; that quiet, that huge cacophony
simultaneous. No promise was being accorded, the blossoms
were not doves, there was no rainbow. And when it was claimed
the war had ended, it had not ended.
Not the hair that you or I have touched
but the follicles all lovers hands have combed
their fingers through, that number so much
greater, say, than all the teeth from speechless
mouths that now the fish and birds
perceive as stream and garden pebbles.
Not the breaths our mother exhaled
since mud filled her father's lungs
at Amiens but all the breaths of children
put to rest since Iphigenia's sacrifice.
Not the drops of blood that have
fallen on all the battlefields of spring
but the particles of mist the sun has scattered
from them -- enough to weigh your khakis
down after a patrol, enough to resurrect
your face from its evening mask of ash.
Not the number of the stars that burn
and burn out like eyes of but the number
of the particles that give the stars their fire
surely exceeds the number of our crimes.