Allen Ginsberg, 1926 - 1997
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt
Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for
images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the
tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely
old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who
killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks
of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey
in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary
streets? The trees add shade to shade,
lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America
of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old
courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry
and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the
black waters of Lethe?
—Berkeley, 1955
From Collected
Poems 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg, published by Harper & Row.
Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/supermarket-california
No comments:
Post a Comment