Sunday, February 28, 2016

UNCOLLECTED ALLEN GINSBERG ~








[ P O E M ]




3'd day down Yangtze River, yesterday

passed vast mountain gorges and hairpin

river-bends, mist sun and cement factory

soft coal dust everywhere, all China

got a big allergic cold. Literary dele-

gation homebound after 3 weeks, now I'm

traveling separately like I used to — except

everywhere omnipresent kindly Chinese

Bureaucracy meets me at airports & boats

& takes me to tourist hotels & orders meals. I'm

trying to figure a way out — envious of 2

bearded hippies traveling 4th class in

steerage eating tangerines & bananas —

sleepers in passageways on mats, Chinese

voyagers playing checkers. Saw Beijing,

Great Wall, tombs & palaces, Suchow's

Tang gardens, Hangchow's West Lake walkway

dyke to hold the giant water in years of drought

built up by governors Tsu-Tung-Po and Po-Chu-I.

Saw Cold Mt. Temple w/ Snyder who'd

heard its bell echo across ocean.


                                                   — China, November 11, 1984


Published in: Big Scream, no. 20 (February 15, 1985), p. 4, November 11,1984




Now, here's a poet and his editor who know how to honor its small press.
Each poem in this book is individually notated and graced.