Last Night in Calcutta - Allen Ginsberg
If any of you have been to Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in India, these words are sure to come back to haunt.
Last Night in Calcutta
Still night. The old clock Ticks,
half past two. A ringing of crickets
awake in the ceiling. The gate is locked
on the street outside--sleepers, mustaches,
nakedness, but no desire. A few mosquitos
waken the itch, the fan turns slowly--
a car thunders along the black asphalt,
a bull snorts, something is expected--
Time sits solid in the four yellow walls.
No one is here, emptiness filled with train
whistles & dog barks, answered a block away.
Pushkin sits on the bookshelf, Shakespeare's
complete works as well as Blake's unread--
O Spirit of Poetry, no use calling on you
babbling in this emptiness furnished with beds
under the bright oval mirror--perfect
night for sleepers to dissolve in tranquil
blackness, and rest there eight hours
--Waking to stained fingers, bitter mouth
and lung gripped by cigarette hunger,
what to do with this big toe, this arm
this eye in the starving skeleton-filled
sore horse tramcar-heated Calcutta in
Eternity--sweating and teeth rotted away--
Rilke at least could dream about lovers,
the old breast excitement and trembling belly,
is that it? And the vast starry space--
If the brain changes matter breathes
fearfully back on man--But now
the great crash of buildings and planets
breaks thru the walls of language and drowns
me under its Ganges heaviness forever.
No escape but thru Bangkok and New York death.
Skin is sufficient to be skin, that's all
it ever could be, tho screams of pain in the kidney
make it sick of itself, a wavy dream
dying to finish its all to famous misery
--Leave immortality for another to suffer like a fool,
not get stuck in the corner of the universe
sticking morphine in the arm and eating meat.
--
Allen Ginsberg
Last Night in Calcutta
Still night. The old clock Ticks,
half past two. A ringing of crickets
awake in the ceiling. The gate is locked
on the street outside--sleepers, mustaches,
nakedness, but no desire. A few mosquitos
waken the itch, the fan turns slowly--
a car thunders along the black asphalt,
a bull snorts, something is expected--
Time sits solid in the four yellow walls.
No one is here, emptiness filled with train
whistles & dog barks, answered a block away.
Pushkin sits on the bookshelf, Shakespeare's
complete works as well as Blake's unread--
O Spirit of Poetry, no use calling on you
babbling in this emptiness furnished with beds
under the bright oval mirror--perfect
night for sleepers to dissolve in tranquil
blackness, and rest there eight hours
--Waking to stained fingers, bitter mouth
and lung gripped by cigarette hunger,
what to do with this big toe, this arm
this eye in the starving skeleton-filled
sore horse tramcar-heated Calcutta in
Eternity--sweating and teeth rotted away--
Rilke at least could dream about lovers,
the old breast excitement and trembling belly,
is that it? And the vast starry space--
If the brain changes matter breathes
fearfully back on man--But now
the great crash of buildings and planets
breaks thru the walls of language and drowns
me under its Ganges heaviness forever.
No escape but thru Bangkok and New York death.
Skin is sufficient to be skin, that's all
it ever could be, tho screams of pain in the kidney
make it sick of itself, a wavy dream
dying to finish its all to famous misery
--Leave immortality for another to suffer like a fool,
not get stuck in the corner of the universe
sticking morphine in the arm and eating meat.
--
Allen Ginsberg