America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic?
In one corner of the ward somebody was eating a raw chicken. The cheerful nurses did not see. With the tube down my throat I could not tell them. Nor did they notice the horror show on the TV set suspended over my windowless bed. The screen was dead
Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems
Slip-pilings on the Brooklyn littoral —the poles still tarry, flimsy; the ferry terminus with its walledup doors wan doorshapes on eroded sills. Downstream, the strutwork of the Williamsburg cable tower threw its cool shadow half a mile inland
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China,
Right after the bomb, even before the ceiling And walls and floor are rearranging You and themselves into a different world, You must hold still, must wait for them To settle down in unpredictable ways, To bring their wars, shuddering, To an end, and only then should you begin Numbly to feel what freedom may be left To your feet or knees, to your elbows Or clenched fingers. Where you used to walk Or lean or lie down or fix your attention At a whim or stomp your foot Or slump in a chair, you'll find a new Architecturally unsound floor-plan To contend with, if you can move
So it did not come as a surprise—a relief, almost—when we heard the tac-tac-tac of machine guns and the thud of grenades rising up from the woods below. The Germans were advancing again through the tangle of bomb-shattered branches, clearing a path with axe-blows, foreheads crushed beneath the overhang of great steel helmets, gleaming eyes fixed dead ahead. The rest of that day was bitter, and many of us fell forever headlong in the grass. But toward evening the voice of battle began to diminish, and then from the depths of the forest we could hear the song of the wounded: the serene, monotonous, sad-hopeful song of the wounded, joining the chorus of birds hidden in the foliage as they welcomed the return of the moon. It was still daylight, but the moon was rising sweetly from behind the forested mountains of Reims.
It was green against a white and tender sky…
A moon from the forest of Ardennes, a moon from the country of Rimbaud, of Verlaine, a delicate green moon, round and light,
Never mind the pins And needles I am on. Let all the other instruments Of torture have their way. While air-conditioners Freeze my coffee I watch the toaster Eating my toast.
After the declaration by emperor to stop the war many people in Tokyo killed themselves, for instance, in front of the imperial palace. But few people knows those facts.
Hence you must teach me where you got the news or what sort of book gave you the fact that quite few people knows.
Sirs, when you are in your last extremity, When your admirals are drowning in the grass-green sea, When your generals are preparing the total catastrophe— I just want you to know how you can not count on me.
I have ridden to hounds through my ancestral halls, I have picked the eternal crocus on the ultimate hill, I have fallen through the window of the highest room, But don’t ask me to help you ’cause I never will.
Betrayed by his five mechanic agents, falling Captive to consciousness, he summons light To all its duties, and assumes the world Like a common penance. Rust on the green tongue burns Like history’s corrosive on his living tree. But all the monsters of his sleep’s dark sea Are tame familiars in the morning sun.
Drew down the curse of heaven on her umbrella furled and smelling of wet cigarettes, Jo ran off in rain one pitchy night, one bloody a.m. found her staring, snoring.
“Why do we all stay up so late?” Jo queried. “Though I don’t stay up so late as my friends.” She tripped the little bomb of wasps. They got her.
This is about heroes, and you should know I do not mean old men with membranous snow Already patching them on hand and cheek; I mean the medaled models from the Greek On whom the air force lavishes technique Like tennis lessons and engineering toys Given at schools for preparatory boys.
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