what_use_is_poetry
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

USES OF POETRY by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


So what is the use of poetry these days
What use it What good is it
these days and nights in the Age of Autogeddon
in which poetry is what has been paved over
to make a freeway for armies of the night
as in that palm paradiso just north of Nicaragua
where promises made in the plazas
will be betrayed in the back country
or in the so-green fields
of the Concord Naval Weapons Station
where armed trains run over green protesters
where poetry is made important by its absence
the lack of love in a bed at midnight
or lack of light at high noon
in the not-so-White House
For even bad poetry has relevance
for what it does not say
for what it leaves out
Yes what of the sun streaming down
in the meshes of morning
what of white nights and mouths of desire
lips saying Lulu Lulu over and over
and all things born with wings that sing
and far far cries upon a beach at nightfall
and light that ever was on land and sea
and caverns measured out by man
where once the sacred rivers ran
near cities by the sea
through which we walk and wander absently
astounded constantly
by the mad spectacle of existence
and all these talking animals on wheels
heroes and heroines with a thousand eyes
with bent hearts and hidden oversouls
with no more myths to call their own
constantly astounded as I am still
by these bare-face bipeds in clothes
these stand-up tragedians
pale idols in the night streets
trance-dancers in the dust of the Last Waltz
in this time of gridlock Autogeddon
where the voice of the poet still sounds distantly
the voice of the Fourth Person Singular
the voice within the voice of the turtle
the face behind the face of the race
a book of light at night
the very voice of life as Whitman heard it
a wild soft laughter
(ah but to free it still
from the word-processor of the mind!)
And I am a reporter for a newspaper
on another planet
come to file a down-to-earth story
of the What When Where How and Why
of this astounding life down here
and of the strange clowns in control of it
the curious clowns in control of it
with hands upon the windowsills
of dread demonic mills
casting their own dark shadows
into the earth's great shadow
in the end of time unseen
in the supreme hashish of our dream 		061014
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Pto Then again, what use is the_absence_of_poetry? 061014
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Death of a Rose i'm printing this off and framing it within my mind. 061014
what's it to you?
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