Mar 18 2009
∞
April 10, 2006: A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg
A Supermarket in California
Allen Ginsberg
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.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full
of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca,
what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy,
and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
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?
Berkeley, 1955
[This is the first Ginsberg poem I ever read, and is still one of my
all-time favorites. There are a lot of similarities between Ginsberg
and Walt Whitman, maybe the most famous American poet, who wrote a
hundred years earlier. Both wrote poetry for and about ordinary
people, used a style that’s almost conversational, and were gay.
Ginsberg teases out the similarities here, especially the loneliness
of being gay in America: “through solitary streets … home to our
silent cottage.” I adore the strange dreaminess of this, and the
vivid language and images. What peaches and what penumbras!]
A YEAR AGO TODAY: Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska
