THE CANTICLE OF JACK KEROUAC (Excerpt)
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
There is a garden in the memory of America
There is a nightbird in its memory
There is an andante cantabile
in a garden in the memory
of America
In a secret garden
in a private place
a song a melody
a nightsong echoing
in the memory of America
In the sound of a nightbird
outside a Lowell window
In the cry of kids
in tenement yards at night
In the deep sound
of a woman murmuring
a woman singing broken melody
in a shuttered room
in an old wood house
in Lowell
As the world cracks by
thundering
like a lost lumber truck
on a steep grade
in Kerouac America
The woman sits silent now
rocking backward
to Whistler’s Mother in Lowell
and all the tough old
Canuck mothers
and Jack’s Mémère
And they continue rocking
And may still on stormy nights show through
as a phantom after-image
on silent TV screens
a flickered after-image
that will not go away
in Moody Street
in Beaulieu Street
in ‘dirtstreet Sarah Avenue’
in Pawtucketville
And in the Church of St. Jean Baptiste
…read “The Canticle of Jack Kerouac” in its entirety at poetryfoundation.org.
About the author: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born 1919) earned an M.A. at Columbia University and a doctorate in literature at the University of Paris, Sorbonne. Ferlinghetti co-founded San Francisco’s City Lights Booksellers & Publishing — most famous as the original publisher of Allen Ginsberg‘s poem Howl. In 1956, Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges for publishing Howl; after a lengthy trial, he was acquitted the following year in a landmark First Amendment case.
Photo: Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1959).
Yeah!
Hello Jack!
I like this tribute and religious poem of Lawrence!
Have a good day,
Rita.