ALLEN GINSBERG COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1997 Collected Poems 1947–1997 is a compilation of the texts of Collected Poems 1947–1980, White Shroud: Poems 1980–1985, Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992, and Death & Fame: Poems 1993–1997. The Estate would like to express gratitude to Eliot Katz for his dedication and assistance in preparation of this manuscript, Danny Mulligan at HarperCollins for attentive coordinating, and Jerey Posternak at the Wylie Agency for his tireless intermediation. Contents COLLECTED POEMS 1947–1980 Author’s Preface, Reader’s Manual I. EMPTY MIRROR: GATES OF WRATH (1947–1952) In Society The Bricklayer’s Lunch Hour Two Sonnets On Reading William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” The Eye Altering Alters All A Very Dove Vision 1948 Do We Understand Each Other? The Voice of Rock Refrain A Western Ballad The Trembling of the Veil A Meaningless Institution A Mad Gleam Complaint of the Skeleton to Time Psalm I An Eastern Ballad Sweet Levinsky Psalm II Fie My Fum Pull My Daisy The Shrouded Stranger Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City After All, What Else Is There to Say? Sometime Jailhouse Blues Please Open the Window and Let Me In “Tonite all is well” Fyodor Epigram on a Painting of Golgotha “I attempted to concentrate” Metaphysics In Death, Cannot Reach What Is Most Near This Is About Death Hymn Sunset Ode to the Setting Sun Paterson Bop Lyrics A Dream Long Live the Spiderweb The Shrouded Stranger An Imaginary Rose in a Book Crash The Terms in Which I Think of Reality The Night-Apple Cézanne’s Ports The Blue Angel Two Boys Went Into a Dream Diner A Desolation In Memoriam: William Cannastra, 1922–1950 Ode: My 24th Year How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory The Archetype Poem A Typical Aair A Poem on America After Dead Souls Marijuana Notation Gregory Corso’s Story I Have Increased Power Walking home at night “I learned a world from each” “I made love to myself” A Ghost May Come “I feel as if I am at a dead end” An Atypical Aair 345 W. 15th St. A Crazy Spiritual Wild Orphan II. THE GREEN AUTOMOBILE (1953–1954) The Green Automobile An Asphodel My Alba Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain Havana 1953 Green Valentine Blues Siesta in Xbalba Song (“The weight of the world”) In back of the real On Burroughs’ Work Love Poem on Theme by Whitman Over Kansas III. HOWL, BEFORE & AFTER: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA (1955–1956) Malest Cornici Tuo Catullo Dream Record: June 8, 1955 “Blessed be the Muses” Howl Footnote to Howl A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley A Supermarket in California Four Haiku Sunower Sutra Transcription of Organ Music Sather Gate Illumination America Fragment 1956 Afternoon Seattle Tears Scribble In the Baggage Room at Greyhound Psalm III Many Loves Ready to Roll IV. REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE: (1957–1959) POEM Rocket Squeal Wrote This Last Night Death to Van Gogh’s Ear! Europe! Europe! The Lion for Real The Names At Apollinaire’s Grave Message To Lindsay To Aunt Rose American Change ‘Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square’ Laughing Gas Funny Death My Sad Self Ignu Battleship Newsreel V. KADDISH AND RELATED POEMS (1959–1960) Kaddish: Proem, Narrative, Hymmnn, Lament, Litany and Fugue Mescaline Lysergic Acid I Beg You Come Back & Be Cheerful Psalm IV To an Old Poet in Peru Aether Magic Psalm The Reply The End Man’s glory Fragment: The Names II VI. PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA (1961–1963) Who Will Take Over the Universe Journal Night Thoughts Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber This Form of Life Needs Sex Sunset S.S. Azemour Seabattle of Salamis Took Place o Perama Galilee Shore Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions To P.O. Heat Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat Death News Vulture Peak: Gridhakuta Hill Patna-Benares Express Last Night in Calcutta Understand That This Is a Dream Angkor Wat The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express VII. KING OF MAY: AMERICA TO EUROPE (1963–1965) Nov. 23, 1963: Alone Why Is God Love, Jack? Morning Waking in New York After Yeats I Am a Victim of Telephone Today Message II Big Beat Café in Warsaw The Moments Return Kral Majales Guru Drowse Murmurs Who Be Kind To Studying the Signs Portland Coliseum VIII. THE FALL OF AMERICA (1965–1971) Thru the Vortex West Coast to East (1965–1966) Beginning of a Poem of These States Carmel Valley First Party at Ken Kesey’s with Hell’s Angels Continuation of a Long Poem of These States These States: into L.A. A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood Hiway Poesy: L.A.-Albuquerque-Texas-Wichita Chances “R” Wichita Vortex Sutra Auto Poesy: On the Lam from Bloomington Kansas City to Saint Louis Bayonne Entering NYC Growing Old Again Uptown The Old Village Before I Die Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake Zigzag Back Thru These States (1966—1967) Wings Lifted over the Black Pit Cleveland, the Flats To the Body Iron Horse City Midnight Junk Strains A Vow Autumn Gold: New England Fall Done, Finished with the Biggest Cock Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss Bayonne Turnpike to Tuscarora An Open Window on Chicago Returning North of Vortex Wales Visitation Pentagon Exorcism Elegy Che Guevara War Prot Litany Elegies for Neal Cassady (1968) Elegy for Neal Cassady Chicago to Salt Lake by Air Kiss Ass Manhattan Thirties Flash Please Master A Prophecy Bixby Canyon Crossing Nation Smoke Rolling Down Street Pertussin Swirls of black dust on Avenue D Violence Past Silver Durango Over Mexic Sierra-Wrinkles On Neal’s Ashes Going to Chicago Grant Park: August 28, 1968 Car Crash Ecologues of These States (1969–1971) Over Denver Again Imaginary Universes Rising over night-blackened Detroit Streets To Poe: Over the Planet, Air Albany–Baltimore Easter Sunday Falling Asleep in America Northwest Passage Sonora Desert-Edge Reections in Sleepy Eye Independence Day In a Moonlit Hermit’s Cabin Rain-wet asphalt heat, garbage curbed cans overowing Death on All Fronts Memory Gardens Flash Back Grati 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport After Thoughts G. S. Reading Poesy at Princeton Friday the Thirteenth Anti-Vietnam War Peace Mobilization Ecologue Guru Om “Have You Seen This Movie?” Milarepa Taste Over Laramie Bixby Canyon to Jessore Road (1971) Bixby Canyon Ocean Path Word Breeze Hum Bom! September on Jessore Road IX. MIND BREATHS ALL OVER THE PLACE (1972–1977) Sad Dust Glories (1972–1974) Ayers Rock/Uluru Song Voznesensky’s “Silent Tingling” These States: to Miami Presidential Convention Xmas Gift Thoughts Sitting Breathing “What would you do if you lost it?” Who Yes and It’s Hopeless Under the world there’s a lot of ass, a lot of cunt Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit Night Gleam What I’d Like to Do On Illness News Bulletin On Neruda’s Death Mind Breaths Flying Elegy Teton Village Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass Jaweh and Allah Battle Manifesto Sad Dust Glories Ego Confessions (1974–1977) Ego Confession Mugging Who Runs America? Thoughts on a Breath We Rise on Sun Beams and Fall in the Night Written on Hotel Napkin: Chicago Futures Hospital Window Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox Come All Ye Brave Boys Sickness Blues Gospel Noble Truths Rolling Thunder Stones Cabin in the Rockies Reading French Poetry Two Dreams C’mon Jack Pussy Blues Don’t Grow Old “Junk Mail” “You Might Get in Trouble” Land O’Lakes, Wisc. “Drive All Blames into One” Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin: Vajrayana Seminary For Creeley’s Ear Haunting Poe’s Baltimore Contest of Bards I Lay Love on My Knee Stool Pigeon Blues Punk Rock Your My Big Crybaby Love Replied X. PLUTONIAN ODE (1977–1980) What’s Dead Grim Skeleton Ballade of Poisons Lack Love Father Guru Manhattan May Day Midnight Adapted from Neruda’s “Que dispierte el leñador” Nagasaki Days Plutonian Ode Old Pond Blame the Thought, Cling to the Bummer “Don’t Grow Old” Love Returned December 31, 1978 Brooklyn College Brain Garden State Spring Fashions Las Vegas: Verses Improvised for El Dorado H.S. Newspaper To the Punks of Dawlish Some Love Maybe Love Ruhr-Gebiet Tübingen-Hamburg Schlafwagen Love Forgiven Verses Written for Student Antidraft Registration Rally 1980 Homework After Whitman & Rezniko Reections at Lake Louise τεθν ην δ óλ γω ’πιδε ης Φα νoμ’ λα α Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters Ode to Failure Birdbrain! Eroica “Defending the Faith” Capitol Air Appendix for Collected Poems 1947–1980 Notes Epigraphs from Original Editions Dedications Acknowledgments Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Empty Mirror Introduction by William Carlos Williams to Howl Author’s Cover Writ Index of Proper Names WHITE SHROUD: POEMS 1980–1985 Acknowledgments Porch Scribbles Industrial Waves Those Two Homage Vajracarya Why I Meditate Love Comes Old Love Story Airplane Blues Do the Meditation Rock The Little Fish Devours the Big Fish Happening Now? A Public Poetry “What You Up To?” Maturity “Throw Out the Yellow Journalists of Bad Grammar & Terrible Manner” Going to the World of the Dead Irritable Vegetable Thoughts Sitting Breathing II What the Sea Throws Up at Vlissingen I Am Not I’m a Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg 221 Syllables at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms Arguments Sunday Prayer Brown Rice Quatrains They’re All Phantoms of My Imagining White Shroud Empire Air Surprise Mind Student Love The Question In My Kitchen in New York It’s All So Brief I Love Old Whitman So Written in My Dream by W.