If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
if I admire my arms, my face
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—

who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

******* in the snow
outside my door--
it makes a very straight hole.

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle's palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it's gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox's sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox's prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
     sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
     Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
     box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
     pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
     of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, sur-
     rounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
     machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
     sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
     stream, no hermit in those mounts, just our-
     selves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
     on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
     shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
     dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
     memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
     Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
     treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
     poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
     knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
     and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
     past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
     crackly bleak and dusty with the **** and smog
     and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
     a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
     soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sun-
     rays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
     wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
     from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
     fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
     my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
     locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
     skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
     mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuber-
     ance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
     modern--all that civilization spotting your
     crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
     eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
     home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
     bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
     of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
     tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
     more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
     **** cigar, the ***** of wheelbarrows and the
     milky ******* of cars, wornout ***** out of chairs
     & sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
     standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
     in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
     lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
     to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
     grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
     monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
     grime, while you cursed the heavens of the rail-
     road and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
     flower? when did you look at your skin and
     decide you were an impotent ***** old locomo-
     tive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
     shade of a once powerful mad American locomo-
     tive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
     sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
     not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
     it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
     too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
     bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
     beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're bles-
     sed by our own seed & golden hairy naked ac-
     complishment-bodies growing into mad black
     formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
     eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
     riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sit-
     down vision.

                              Berkeley, 1955

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it, until her
teeth were only accidental stars with a talent
for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,
inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally
in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by
the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter
with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a
pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green  iron table, saying: ‘If the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,
if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea
in the garden…’ I decided that if the shaking
of her ******* could be stopped, some of the
fragments of the afternoon might be collected,
and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.

a blue woman with sticking out ******* hanging
clothes.  On the line. not so old
for the mother of twelve undershirts(we are told
by is it Bishop Taylor who needs hanging

that marriage is a sure cure for *******).

                          A ***** wind,twitches the,clothes which are clean
—this is twilight,
                          a little puppy hopping between
skipping
              children
                            (It is the consummation
of day,the hour)she says to me you big fool
she says i says to her i says Sally
i says
          the


                  mmmoon,begins to,drool

softly,in the hot alley,

a ******’s voice feels curiously cool
(suddenly-Lights go!on,by schedule

In Kohln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang’d with murderous stones
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
   But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
   Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

The surroundings of home, centers, neighorhood
which I see and where I walk; for years and years.

I have created you in joy and in sorrows:
with so many circumstances, with so many things.

And you have become all feeling, for me.

Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
Never think that hours of play
Are your only HOLIDAY,
And that in a HOUSE of joy
Lessons serve but to annoy:
If in any HOUSE you find
Children of a gentle mind,
Each the others pleasing ever--
Each the others vexing never--
Daily work and pastime daily
In their order taking gaily--
Then be very sure that they
Have a life of HOLIDAY.