Allen Ginsberg’s poem ‘Spring night at four a.m.’

“Spring night four a.m.” from Allen Ginsberg’s “Wait Till I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems,” reviewed for the Los Angeles Times by Craig Teicher.

[Poem]

Spring night four a.m.
Garbage lurks by the glass windows
Two guys light a match
Smoke rolls over Eighth Street where
Spade queens walk lipsticked looking for a taxi
Spoon out their handkerchiefs
Coughing against the black dust rising up
Out of Imiri Baraka’s latest volume of poems
The Whole Earth Catalogue up in flames
The water pumps methods for making home-made
yogurt
The crackling red fires running over the San Francisco
Communal catalogue
Herbert Marcuse exploding in flames
Howl, fiery volume after volume
Over the precipice
Fire spreads through the Skira catalogues
The Rembrandt canvas girl
Brown holes appear in priceless Van Goghs, Roman
statuaries
Smoke covered smudged Venus de Milo

//

Up on the front in embers Andy Warhol’s Philosophy From
A To B
Tennessee Williams autobiographical life in ashes
William Carlos Williams’ poetry follows him
To a white dusty grave
Shakespeare himself leaves not a rack behind

— New York City, ca. May 6, 1976

“Spring night four a.m.” from WAIT TILL I’M DEAD: UNCOLLECTED POEMS © 2016 by The Estate of Allen Ginsberg.
Originally published in Villager, vol. 44, no. 20 (May 13, 1976), p. 2. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.