The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Indran Amirthanayagam
Lawrence Unfurling
Let us go down to San Francisco. Let us go down
in March, on the twenty fourth. Let us tell Lawrence thank you for that Coney Island of the night fantastic, for publishing the best minds of his generation howling despite censors, police, legal obscenities. Let us say, thank you for all the translations, from Spanish, French, Chinese, British. Thank you for the lights, the sign on your office window: Open door: Open heart, Open mind I reply. What would we be if we had not read your pocket poets with the neat black and white borders? Where would our nation, our world walk, hand in hand, black and white, gay and straight, if you had not said come out, come in? You are one hundred. We have become one not only on the Ferris wheels, not only in Bar Mitzvahs, at the altar, in the baptismal font. We have become one, not only walking together, arms locked, behind the coffin of the hero cut down before her time. Our time is now. You help us understand these freedoms we share. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American and World Poet. Friend. Reporter in the field after the battle, picking up corpses, preparing for their burial, and sowing the land again for the next hundred, thousand, million, billion stars in the night sky. Where shall we go next? To what distant new home, Lawrence? Have you got a poem in your pocket, ready for the ride? Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |