Text 74

Allen Ginsberg

A SUPERMARKET IN CALIFORNIA

What thoughts I have of you to night, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the side-streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! – and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, pocking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the porkchops? What price banana? Are you my Angel?

I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.

We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard points tonight? (I touch your book and dream of your odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)

Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

Ah, dear father, greybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?