I think
this poem is maybe Ginsberg's best . . . I love it.
If 'Howl' was a
howl of adolescence , and I think it was,
then 'Kaddish' is that
of the mature reflective man, though only five years
lies
between when he started working on Howl and when he finished Kaddish.
Allen Ginsberg
Kaddish
For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894-1956
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 An-
swers--and my own imagination
of a withered leaf--at dawn--
Dreaming back thru life, Your time--and mine accelerating toward Apoca-
lypse,
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,
worship-
ping 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 shoul-
dering 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, eating 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, as 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 doorstops 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, the
soul,
in us, alas, offering itself in
sacrifice to change's fierce hunger--hair
and teeth--and the roar of
bonepain, skull bare, break 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,--she 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, agrieve
watching Marie Dressler address human-
ity, Chaplin dance in youth,
or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping
Czar
--by standing room with Elanor
& Max--watching also the Capital
ists 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--Deaths-
head 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 Tri-
umph,
to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower--fed to
the
ground--but made, with its
petals, colored, thinking 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,
consciousness,
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. 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 Im-
mortality, 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, mar-
ried dreamed, mortal changed--Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower
maddened, made no Utopia, shut under
pine, almed in Earth, blamed 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 Won-
derer, 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!
II
Over and over--refrain--of the
Hospitals--still haven't written your
history--leave it abstract--a few images
run thru the mind--like the
saxophone chorus of houses and years--
remembrance of electrical shocks.
By long nites as a child in
Paterson apartment, watching over your
nervousness--you were fat--your next move--
By that afternoon I stayed home
from school to take care of you--
once and for all--when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my
opinion of the cosmos, I was lost--
By my later burden--vow to
illuminate mankind--this is release of
particulars--(mad as you)--(sanity a trick of agreement)--
But you stared out the window
on the Broadway Church corner, and
spied a mystical assassin from Newark,
So phoned the Doctor--'OK go
way for a rest'--so I put on my coat
and walked you downstreet--On the way a grammarschool boy screamed,
unaccountably--'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered--
and you covered your nose with
motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma--
And was the driver of the
cheesebox Public Service bus a member of
the gang? You shuddered at his
face, I could hardly get you on--to New
York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound--
- - - - - -
the above is maybe 25% of the full poem, however, the full text of Kaddish
can be read here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179391
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