Notes on Sitting Beside a Noble Corpse - Light Breeze Stirring - The Curtains -
Blue, Faint Tremor of His Blue Shroud


Allen Ginsberg will never raise this body up, go out board a shiny airplane 
        Travel a Thousand miles - Denver? - Thousands - Milano - ? 
        To pump the harmonium (how ecstatically he does this!) 
        Chant OMNAMO SHIVAYA, all ashes all ashes again 

Allen Ginsberg will never sit late across the street hunched over a Chinese noodle bowl 
        The old Professor stayed up late reading the young poet's poems 

Allen Ginsberg will never meditate this body, spine straight to heaven 
        Holding up the roof of the world on the bright orange cushion 

Allen Ginsberg's eyes will never water again - of tear gas, Bell's Palsy, 
        Or flow on the death of the guru 
        Read Blake Shelley lines to freeze your soul and you weep you weep 
        The whole Naropa Kerouac Disembodied tent is weeping 

Allen Ginsberg will never tell awkward teen boy he's known since birth he's sexy again 
        From hospital bed 
        The boy stood at the window while his mother sobbed because Allen 
        Ginsberg said 
        He's dying today 

Allen Ginsberg will never brush this thin corpse hair 
        Get groomed, oil feet, brush teeth long time (he's so conscientious) 
        The telephone rings 
        Allen Ginsberg will never answer it again 

Allen Ginsberg will never embarrass Russia, China, the White House 
        Dead corrupt presidents, Cuba, the CIA, Universe again 
        But Allen Ginsberg will ever ease the pain of living with human song and story 
        Born on wing of perpetual prophesy - life and death's a spiral - 
        He's mounting the stairs now with Vajra Yogini 

Full century's brilliant Allen's gone, in other myriad forms lives on 
See through this palpable skull's tender eye, kind mind kind mind 
  don't die 


- Anne Waldman 
Written by the poet's bed after his death 
April 5, 1997, New York City