In honor of the 83rd anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's birth, I share what I wrote when I heard he had died...when he began again on The Circle.
On the Day Allen Ginsberg Died
This morning when I heard
that Allen was dead
I thought of several things
I would have thanked him for
if I had had the chance:
for seeming to always have a camera
when Dean and Jack
and the other angels
were goofing;
for walking the streets of NYC
with that roll of a manuscript
and getting “On The Road”
into print;
for howling “Howl”
into San Francisco days and nights
and across the plains and into the alleys.
When I heard the news
the first person I thought of was
Walt Whitman,
and the loss I felt having been born
62 years after he died,
never meeting him.
I will never meet Allen G.
But I know him
because he has spoken to me.
I have just reread A Supermarket in California.
It opens:
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
It closes:
Ah, dear father graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
I’ll miss you Allen ... the last angel.
(04.04.97)