Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties

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Text File | 1995-06-01 | 8KB | 202 lines

After The Cries Of The Birds Has Stopped Hurrying thru eternity after the cries of the birds has stopped I see the future of the world in a new visionary society now only dimly recognizable in folk-rock ballrooms free-form dancers in ecstatic clothing their hearts their gurus every man his own myth butterflies in amber caught fucking life hurrying through eternity to a new pastorial era I see the shadows of that future in that white island which is San Francisco floating in its foreign sea seen high on a hill in the Berkeley Rose Garden looking West at sunset to the Golden Gate adrift in its Japanese landscape under Mt. Tamal-Fuji with its grazing bulls hurrying thru heaven the city with its white buildings "a temple to some unknown god" (as Voznesensky said) after the cries of the birds has stopped I see the sea come in over South San Francisco and the island of the city truly floated free at last never really a part of America East East and West West and the twain met long ago in "the wish to pursue what lies beyond the mind" with no place to go but in after Columbus recovered America and the West Coast captured by some Spanish Catholics cagily getting the jump by sea coveredwagons crawling over lost plains hung up in Oklahoma Prairie schooners into Pullmans while whole tribes of Indians shake hopeless feather lances and disappear over the horizon to reappear centuries later feet up and smoking wild cigars at the corner of Hollywood and Vine hurrying thru eternity must we wait for the cries of the birds to be stopped before we dig in after centuries of running up and down the Coast of West looking for the right place to jump off further Westward the Gutenberg Gallaxy casts its light no further the "Westward march of civilization" comes to a dead stop on the shores of Big Sur Portland & Santa Monica and turns upon itself at last after the cries of the birds has stopped must we wait for that to dig a new model of the universe with instant communication a world village in which every human being is a part of us though we be still throw-aways in an evolutionary progression as Spengler reverses himself Mark Twain meets Jack London and turns back to Mississippi shaking his head and the Last Frontier having no place to go but In can't face it and buries its Head Western civilization gone too far West might suffer a sea-change into Something Else Eastern and that won't do the Chinese are coming anyway time we prepared their tea Gunga Din still with us Kipling nods & cries I told you so! the French King hollers Merde! and abandons his Vietnam bordel but not us we love them too much for that though the Mayflower turned around sets sail again back to Plymouth England (and the Piltdown let down) misjudging the coast & landing in Loverpool American poets capture Royal Albert Hall The Jefferson Airplane takes off and circles heaven It all figures in a new litany probably pastoral after the cries of the birds has stopped Rose petals fall in the Berkeley Rose Garden where I sit trying to remember the lines about rose leaves in the Four Quartets Stella kisses her lover in the sunset under an arbor A Los Angeles actor goes Zap! Zap! at the setting sun It is the end I drop downhill into the reception for Anais Nin with a paperbag full of rose leaves She is autographing her Book I empty the bag over her head from behind Her gold lacquered hair sheds the petals They tumble red & yellow on her signed book Girl again she presses them between the leaves delightedly like fallen friends Her words flame in my heart Virginia Woolf under water she drifts away on the book a leaf herself blowing skittered over the horizon The wish to pursue what lies beyond the mind lies just beyond Ask a flower what it does to move beyond the senses Our cells hate metal The tide turns We shoot holes in the clouds' trousers and napalm sears the hillsides skips a bridge narrows to a grass hut full of charred bodies and is later reported looking like "The eternal flame at Kennedy's grave" A tree flowers red It can't run Shall we now advance into the 21st century? I see the lyric future of the world on the beaches of Big Sur gurus at Jack's Flats nude swart maidens swimming in pools of sunlight Kali dancing on the beach guitarists with one earing lovely birds in long dresses and Indian headbands What does this have to do with Lenin? Plenty! Die-hard Maoists lie down together crosswise and out comes a string of Chinese firecrackers and after the cries of the birds has stopped Chinese junks show up suddenly off the coast of Big Sur filled with more than Chinese philosophers dreaming they are butterflies How shall we greet them? Are we ready to receive them? Shall we put out koan steppingstones scrolls & bowls greet them with agape Tu Fu and bamboo flutes at midnight? Big Sur junk meet Chinese junk? Will they ride the breakers into Bixby Cove? Will they bring their women with them Will we take them on the beach like Ron Boise's lovers in Kama Sutra face them with Zen zazen & tea made from the dust of wings of butterflies dreaming they're philosophers? Or meet them with last war's tanks roaring out of Fort Ord down the highways & canyons shooting as they come flame-throwers flaming jelly into the Chinese rushes under the bridge at Bixby? The U.S. owns the highway but is Big Sur in the USA? San Francisco floats away beyond the three-mile limit of the District of Internal Revenue No need to pay your taxes The seas come in to cover us Agape we are & agape we'll be _____Lawrence Ferlinghetti June 22,1966 Copyright ┬⌐ 1995 Lawrence Ferlinghetti