when poets grow old they go
to teach English in the universities
thus Ginsberg wound up at
Brooklyn College, and Snyder
at UC Davis, like gentle lions
in the protected game preserves
they were forged in the fires
of the fifties and sixties
the heroic Journey to the East,
assaulting the politicians of
the deadbrained armies, the soulless
and lacklove Molochs of Amerika
Snyder a shaman of the mountains
and Ginsberg a shaman of the cities
Ginsberg sending out cosmopolitan greetings
and roars to the end; I saw him a year
before his death, chanting “Don’t smoke
the official dope” – wry, cynical, untamed
Snyder making love to the earth
he discovered oil as long ago as the fifties
and named the addiction; in sixty-seven
at the Houseboat Summit with Leary
and Watts, they plotted a new civilization,
just around the corner, the new dawn
and fought for it in the streets; well,
we all know what happened to that
fabled Age of Aquarius we thought
would save us, and the world – the devil
principalities and wicked governments
shot that down, discouraged our children
I studied Russian Novel with Nick Lindsay
at Goshen College, wrote a paper on
“The Impotent Hero” – how prophetic
Nick’s old man Vachel had killed himself
so Nick fathered thirteen children, delivered
them all by hand, with DuBose’s help of course
Nick remained a carpenter on Edisto Island,
banging out the Gullah rhythms, poetry in
his calloused hands and tormented hammers
so poets forge their own destinies – Rimbaud
went off to sell guns and trade slaves, Thomas
drank himself to death
poetry is not a trade for the faint-hearted who
wear green Nehru jackets when they’re in
fashion and flit about reading crap at the
colleges – we’ve all seen them come and go
some poets write one poem in their life
and that’s it – most die weeping in the alleys
