Classic Poem

Dachau’s ashes burn my feet
The asphalt smokes under me
Warheads & bayonets stuck
under my nails

I’ll stroke a stray strand of my beloved’s hair
And I myself shall smoke
crucified Christ-like on wings of bombers
flying through this night to kill Christ’s kids

My skin trembles with explosions
as if it were Vietnam
and breaking my back and ribs
the Berlin Wall runs through me

You talk to me of freedom? Empty question
under umbrellas of bombs in the sky
It’s a disgrace to be free of your own age
A hundred times more shameful than to be its slave

Yes I’m enslaved to Tashkent women
and to Dallas bullets and Peking slogans
and Vietnam widows and Russian women
with picks beside the tracks and kerchiefs over their eyes

Yes I’m not free of Pushkin and Blok
Not free of the State of Maryland and Zima Station
Not free of the Devil and God
Not free of earth’s beauty and its shit

Yes I’m enslaved to a thirst for taking a wet-mop
to the heads of all the bickerers & butchers of the world
Yes I’m enslaved to the honor of busting the mugs
of all the bastards on earth

And maybe I’ll be loved by the people for this
For spending my life
(not without precedent in this iron age)
glorifying unfreedom from
the true struggle for freedom


Translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti with Anthony Kahn