Lawrence Ferlinghetti

1.

 
Far from the sea far from the sea
                                    of Breton fishermen
      the white clouds scudding
                                            over Lowell
           and the white birches the
                                          bare white birches
               along the blear night roads
                                      flashing by in darkness
           (where once he rode
                                       in Pop’s old Plymouth)
And the birch-white face
                                   of a Merrimac madonna
           shadowed in streetlight
                           by Merrimac’s shroudy waters
                —a leaf blown
                                    upon sea wind
                    out of Brittany
                                          over endless oceans
 
 

2.

 
There is a garden in the memory of America
There is a nightbird in its memory
There is an andante cantabile
in a garden in the memory
of America
In a secret garden
in a private place
a song a melody
a nightsong echoing
in the memory of America
In the sound of a nightbird
outside a Lowell window
In the cry of kids
in tenement yards at night
In the deep sound
of a woman murmuring
a woman singing broken melody
in a shuttered room
in an old wood house
in Lowell
As the world cracks by
                                thundering
like a lost lumber truck
                                   on a steep grade
              in Kerouac America
The woman sits silent now
                                    rocking backward
     to Whistler’s Mother in Lowell
                        and all the tough old
                                         Canuck mothers
                             and Jack’s Mémère
And they continue rocking
 
     And may still on stormy nights show through
         as a phantom after-image
                           on silent TV screens
            a flickered after-image
                             that will not go away
               in Moody Street
                 in Beaulieu Street
                  in ‘dirtstreet Sarah Avenue’
   in Pawtucketville
      And in the Church of St. Jean Baptiste
 
 

3.

 
And the Old Worthen Bar
                                 in Lowell Mass. at midnight
        in the now of Nineteen Eighty-seven
Kerouackian revellers
                              crowd the wood booths
        ancient with carved initials
                 of a million drinking bouts
                       the clouts of the
                                      Shrouded Stranger
                 upon each wood pew
     where the likes of Kerouack lumberjack
            feinted their defiance
                                of dung and death
Ah the broken wood and the punka fans still turning
         (pull-cord wavings
                                    of the breath of the Buddha)
      still lost in Lowell’s
                                       ‘vast tragedies of darkness’
                          with Jack
 
 

4.

 
And the Four Sisters Diner
        also known as ‘The Owl’
Sunday morning now
                          March Eighty-seven
or any year of Sunday specials
Scrambled eggs and chopped ham
  the bright booths loaded with families
     Lowell Greek and Gaspé French
              Joual patois and Argos argot
   Spartan slaves escaped
                        into the New World
        here incarnate
                             in rush of blood of
                           American Sunday morning
And “Ti-Jean” Jack Kerouac
     comes smiling in
                          baseball cap cocked up
              hungry for mass
                             in this Church of All Hungry Saints
        haunt of all-night Owls
                                          blessing every booth...
 
 

5.

Ah he the Silent Smiler
   the one
              with the lumberjack shirt
        and cap with flaps askew
                    blowing his hands in winter
            as if to light a flame
   The Shrouded Stranger knew him
        as Ti-Jean the Smiler
           grooking past redbrick mill buildings
           down by the riverrun
                             (O mighty Merrimac
                                          ‘thunderous husher’)
              where once upon a midnight then
           young Ti-Jean danced with Mémère
                  in the moondrowned light
And rolled upon the greensward
   his mother and lover
        all one with Buddha
                          in his arms
 
 

6.

 
And then Ti-Jean Jack with Joual tongue
     disguised as an American fullback in plaid shirt
         crossing and recrossing America
                                            in speedy cars
   a Dr. Sax’s shadow shadowing him
     like a shroudy cloud over the landscape
      Song of the Open Road sung drunken
              with Whitman and Jack London and Thomas Wolfe
           still echoing through
                           a Nineteen Thirties America
                           A Nineteen Forties America
                           an America now long gone
              except in broken down dusty old
                                             Greyhound Bus stations
                  in small lost towns
      Ti-Jean’s vision of America
               seen from a moving car window
                     the same as Wolfe’s lonely
                                               sweeping vision
                 glimpsed from a coach-train long ago
      (‘And thus did he see first the dark land’)
And so Jack
               in an angel midnight bar
  somewhere West of Middle America
         where one drunk madonna
                       (shades of one on a Merrimac corner)
     makes him a gesture with her eyes
                                                      a blue gesture
         and Ti-Jean answers
                                      only with his eyes
And the night goes on with them
      And the light comes up on them
                     making love in a parking lot
 
 

7.

 
In the dark of his fellaheen night
   in the light of the illuminated
                                Stations of the Cross
              and the illuminated Grotto
                          down behind the Funeral Home
                                          by roar of river
      where now Ti-Jean alone
                    (returned to Lowell
                       in one more doomed
                                   Wolfian attempt
                                   to Go Home Again)
   gropes past the Twelve Stations of the Cross
              reciting aloud the French inscriptions
                  in his Joual accent
           which makes the plaster French Christ
                                                      laugh and cry
                 as He hefts His huge Cross
                                       up the Eternal Hill
   And a very real tear drops
                                          in the Grotto
                          from the face
                                             of the stoned Virgin
 
 

8.

 
        Light upon light
The Mountain
                 keeps still
 
 

9.

 
        Hands over ears
He steals away
              with the Bell. . . .
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