AMERICA

(extracts)

A Confidential Report to Dr Bertolt Brecht on the Present Condition of The United States of America

“America, fabulous meltingpot!
God's own country!
Just called by the initials,
USA,
Like everybody's boyhood friend, incapable of change!”

Bert Brecht, “Vanished Glory of New York the Giant City”

TWA Flight 707 1300 hrs from London arr. NY 4.30

late pounding down pier 22                                                        12.IV.69
blue sky soft ribbed sandclouds

Loew’s Midtown Motor Inn.    8th Ave between 48th and 49th Streets, New York, NY 10019

sunset helicopters Hudson river
from my 11th-story window

waking to red-and-black funnels behind the buildings
noise of rockdrills police sirens waking me every morning
RHEINGOLD, THE TEN-MINUTE HEADACHE

terrible heat like an oven between the buildings                        14.IX.69

On Broadway
3 black prostitutes
beautiful
standing like the Supremes
about to sing “Stop
in the Name of Love”
as I walk round the corner
Al Kooper tired nervous cowboy
at home
playing the electric keyboard

The Dixie Restaurant: Closed for Jewish New Year

Television: hideous quizgames

day      Batman
and     The Addams family
night    stockmarket quotations
Castle: for Malcolm Morley
man in a sail boat
placed there by the invisible hand
motionless for ever
not wondering why
stones as real as painted clouds
at the hard white edges the dream fades
in the hard white empty studio

justify right - - - - - for John Clem Clarke
drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweed
in the St Adrian Co.
painted Cavaliers quietly watched me get pissed
bright lights Coney Island on Bleeker St
yellow taxi home
(…)

5.X.69
for Allen Ginsberg

AlIen stumbling walk guide to the nightworld
buying egg creams at the allnight Gem Spa
dirty faded sign FIVE-SPOT
trashcans car engines mattresses
meeting a man carrying a shining bikewheel
in dark wiremesh Tomkins Square
strange beautiful cracked voice
autoharp dulcimer songs of Innocence and Experience
lambs dancing on the hillsides
poet burying his face in the rainsoaked grass
dark streets distant glass breaking
home in a yellow taxi
the girl who sits next to me in the hotel coffeeshop
furcoat worrying about her acne eating a hot fudge sundae

Ohio Landscape from the air
patterns of township
clumps of red gold orange trees
pale clay streaked
round green ponds reflecting the sun
rows of parked cars
shining like child’s glass beads in the sunlight

from America. Published by Turret Books, 1972.