Kaddish . . . for Naomi

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.

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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--


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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