HE
(To Allen Ginsberg)
He is one of the prophets come back
He is one of the wiggy prophets come back
He had a beard in the Old Testament
but shaved in off in Paterson
He has a microphone arround his neck
at a poetry reading
and he is more than one poet
and he is an old man perpetually writing a poem
about an old man
whose every third thought is Death
and who is writting a poem
about an old man
whose every third thought is Death
and who is writing a poem
Like the picture on a Quaker Oats box
that shows a figure holding up a box
upon which is a picture of a figure
holding up a box
and the figure smaller and smaller
and further away each time
a picture of shrinking reality itself
He is one of the prophets come back
to see to hear to file a revised report
on the present state
of the shrinking world
He has buttonhooks in his eyes
with which he fastens on
to every shoestring rumor
of the nature of reality
And his eye fixes intself
on every stray person or thing
and waits form it to move
like a car with a dead white mouse
suspecting it of hiding
some small clew to existence
and he waits gently
for it to reveal itself
or herself or himself
and he is gentle as the lamb of God
made into mad cutlets
And he picks up every suspicious object
and he picks up evey persons or thing
examining it and shaking it
like a white mouse with a piece of string
who thinks the thing is alive
and shakes it to speak
and shakes it alive
and shakes it to speak
He is a cat who creeps at night
and sleeps his buddhahood in the violet hour
and listens for the sound of three hands about to clap
and reads the script of his brainpan
his hieroglyph of existence
He is a talking asshole on a stick
he is a walkie-talkie on two legs
and he holds his phone to his ear
and he holds his phone to his mouth
and hears death death
He has one head with one tongue hung
in the back of his mouth
and he speaks with an animal tongue
and man has devised a language
that no other animal understands
and his tongue sees and his tongue speaks
and his own ear hears what is said
and clings to his head
and hears death death
and he has a tongue to say it
that not other animal understands
He is a forked root walking
with a knot-hole eye in the middle of his head
and his eye turns outward and inward
and sees and is mad
and is mad and sees
And he is mad eye of the fourth person singular
of which nobody speaks
and he is the voice of the fourth person singular
in which nobody speaks
and which yet exists
with a long head and a foolscap face
and the long mad hair of death
of which nobody speaks
And he speaks of himself and he speaks of the dead
of his dead mother and his Aunt Rose
with their long hair and their long nails
that grow and grow
and they come back in his speech without a manicure
And he has come back with his black hair
and his black eye and his black shoes
and the big black book of his report
And he is a big black bird with one foot raised
to hear the sound of life reveal itself
on the shell of his sensorium
and he speaks to sing to get out his skin
and he pecks with his tongue on the shell of it
and he knocks with his eye on the shell
and sees light light and hears death death
of which nobody speaks
For he is a head with a head's vision
and his is the lizard's look
And his unbuttoned visions is the door
in which he stands and waits and hears
the hand that knocks and claps and claps and knocks
his Death Death
For he is his own ecstatic illumination
and he is his own hallucination
and he is his own shrinker
and his eye turns in the shrinking head of the world
and hears his organ speak Death Death
a deaf music
For he has come at the end of the world
and he his the flippy flesh made word
and he speaks the word he hears in his flesh
and the word is Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death Death
Death
San Francisco, 1959
from 'Starting from San Francisco', Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Directions 1961.
pp. 134-137 in 'THE NEW AMERICAN POETRY, 1945-1960' by Donald Allen, Grove Press, 1960.
http://books.google.it/books?id=MxSkbKqCUrkC&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=%22he+is+one+of+the+wiggy+prophets+come+back%22&source=bl&ots=Rq-gMlebWF&sig=mlorxVWjuZF8GQ4OJbM8NfnkoOY&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22he%20is%20one%20of%20the%20wiggy%20prophets%20come%20back%22&f=false
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