My Sad Self (Ginsburg)

[flyingrat42.livejournal.com]

In Watchmen, the city of New York is just as much of a character as any of its human inhabitants.  This poem reminds me of that.


My Sad Self
To Frank O’Hara

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

Sometimes when my eyes are red

I go up on top of the RCA Building

          and gaze at my world, Manhattan—

                     my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in,

                           lofts, beds, coldwater flats

—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

          its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

               walking the size of specks of wool—

   Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,

          sun go down over New Jersey where I was born

             & Paterson where I played with ants—

   my later loves on 15th Street,

          my greater loves of Lower East Side,

             my once fabulous amours in the Bronx

                                        faraway—

   paths crossing in these hidden streets,

      my history summed up, my absences

             and ecstasies in Harlem—

      —sun shining down on all I own

       in one eyeblink to the horizon

               in my last eternity—

                                     matter is water.

Sad,

 

      I take the elevator and go

             down, pondering,

and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s

                                           plateglass, faces,

             questioning after who loves,

      and stop, bemused

             in front of an automobile shopwindow

      standing lost in calm thought,

             traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me

                      waiting for a moment when ...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to

                      the romantic war news on the radio

                                     ... all movement stops

& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,

      tenderness flowing thru the buildings,

             my fingertips touching reality’s face,

      my own face streaked with tears in the mirror

             of some window—at dusk—

                                     where I have no desire—

      for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese

                      lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,

          Man struggling up the street

                     with packages, newspapers,

                                           ties, beautiful suits

                     toward his desire

          Man, woman, streaming over the pavements

                     red lights clocking hurried watches &

                            movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading

          so crosswise, honking, lengthily,

                            by avenues

          stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums

                            thru such halting traffic

                                           screaming cars and engines

so painfully to this

          countryside, this graveyard

                     this stillness

                                           on deathbed or mountain

          once seen

                            never regained or desired

                                           in the mind to come

where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.