Lyrics Kaddish (Part 1) - Allen Ginsberg

Strange now to think of you,
Gone without corsets & eyes,
While I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
Downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night,
Talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud,
Listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph
The rhythm the rhythm—and your memory in my head three years
After—And read Adonais' last triumphant
Stanzas aloud—wept, realizing how we suffer—
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
Prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem,
Or the Buddhist Book of Answers—and my
Own imagination of a withered leaf—at dawn—
Dreaming back thru life,
Your time—and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,
The final moment—the flower burning in the Day—and what comes after,
Looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
A flash away, and the great dream of Me or China,
Or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed—
Like a poem in the dark—escaped back to Oblivion—
No more to say,
And nothing to weep for but the Beings
In the Dream, trapped in its disappearance,
Sighing, screaming with it,
Buying and selling pieces of phantom, worshipping each other,
Worshipping the God included in it all—longing or
Inevitability?—while it lasts, a Vision—anything more?
It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street,
Look back over my shoulder, Seventh Avenue,
The battlements of window office buildings shouldering each other
High, under a cloud,
Tall as the sky an instant—and the sky above—an old blue place.
Or down the Avenue to the south,
To—as I walk toward the Lower East Side—where you walked 50 years
Ago, little girl—from Russia, e
Ating the first poisonous tomatoes of America—frightened on the dock—
Then struggling in the crowds of
Orchard Street toward what?—toward Newark—
Toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century,
Hand-churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards—
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation,
Teaching school,
And learning to be mad, in a dream—what is this life?
Toward the Key in the window—and the great Key lays its head of light
On top of Manhattan, and over the floor,
And lays down on the sidewalk—in a single vast beam, moving, a
S I walk down First toward the
Yiddish Theater—and the place of poverty
You knew, and I know, but without caring now—Strange to have moved
Thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
With the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstoops
Doors and dark boys on the street, fire escapes old as you
-Tho you're not old now, that's left here with me—
Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe—and I guess that dies
With us—enough to cancel all that
Comes—What came is gone forever every time—
That's good!
That leaves it open for no regret—no fear
Radiators, lacklove, torture even toothache in the end—
Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul—and the lamb, t
He soul, in us, alas,
Offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce hunger—hair and
Teeth—and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, b
Reak rib, rot-skin, braintricked Implacability.
Ai!
Ai!
We do worse!
We are in a fix!
And you're out, Death let you out, Death had the Mercy,
You're done with your century, done with God,
Done with the path thru it—Done with yourself at last—Pure—Back
To the Babe dark before your Father, before us all—before the world—
There, rest.
No more suffering for you.
I know where you've gone, it's good.
No more flowers in the summer fields of
New York, no joy now, no more fear of Louis,
And no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades,
Debts, loves,
Frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands—
No more of sister Elanor,.—s
He gone before you—we kept it secret—you killed her—or she killed
Herself to bear with you—an arthritic
Heart—But Death's killed you both—No matter—
Nor your memory of your mother,
1915 tears in silent movies weeks and weeks—forgetting, a
Ggrieve watching Marie Dressler
Address humanity, Chaplin dance in youth,
Or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met,
Hailing his voice of a weeping Czar—by standing room with Elanor &
Max—watching also the Capitalists take
Seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,
With the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania,
In black baggy gym skirts pants,
Photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the
Waste, and laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
All girls grown old, or dead, now,
And that long hair in the grave—lucky to have husbands later—
You made it—I came too—Eugene my brother before (still grieving now
And will gream on to his last stiff hand,
As he goes thru his cancer—or kill—later perhaps—soon he will think—)
And it's the last moment I remember,
Which I see them all, thru myself, now—tho not you
I didn't foresee what you felt—what more hideous gape
Of bad mouth came first—to you—and were you prepared?
To go where?
In that Dark—that—in that God?
A radiance?
A Lord in the Void?
Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream?
Adonoi at last, with you?
Beyond my remembrance!
Incapable to guess!
Not merely the yellow skull in the grave,
Or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon—Deathshead with Halo?
Can you believe it?
Is it only the sun that shines once for the
Mind, only the flash of existence, than none ever was?
Nothing beyond what we have—what you had—that so pitiful—yet Triumph,
To have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken,
Or flower—fed to the ground—but mad, with its petals, colored, thi
Nking Great Universe, shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript,
Hid in an egg crate hospital,
Cloth wrapped, sore—freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.
No flower like that flower,
Which knew itself in the garden, and fought the knife—lost
Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy—even in the Spring—strange ghost
Thought—some Death—Sharp icicle in his hand—crowned with old
Roses—a dog for his eyes—cock of a sweatshop—heart of electric irons.
All the accumulations of life, that wear us out—clocks, bodies, c
Onsciousness, shoes,
Breasts—begotten sons—your Communism—'Paranoia' into hospitals.
You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later.
You of stroke.
Asleep?
Within a year, the two of you, sisters in death.
Is Elanor happy?
Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway,
Lone large mustache over midnight Accountings, not sure.
L His life passes—as he sees—and what does he doubt now?
Still dream of making money, or that might have made money,
Hired nurse, had children, found even your Immortality, Naomi?
I'll see him soon.
Now I've got to cut through—to talk
To you—as I didn't when you had a mouth.
Forever.
And we're bound for that,
Forever—like Emily Dickinson's horses—headed to the End.
They know the way—These Steeds—run faster than we
Think—it's our own life they cross—and take with them.

Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind,
Married dreamed, mortal changed—Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia,
Shut under pine, almed in Earth, balmed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me,
Beginningless, endless, Father in death.
Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried,
I'm hymnless, I'm Heavenless,
Headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death,
Only One blessed in Nothingness,
Not light or darkness, Dayless Eternity—
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day,
Some of my Time, now given to Nothing—to praise Thee—But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness,
Way for the Wonderer, House sought for All,
Black handkerchief washed clean by weeping—page beyond Psalm—Last
Change of mine and Naomi—to God's
Perfect Darkness—Death, stay thy phantoms!