That night in Greenwich Village, the holy hush of 3AM, A touch of madness in the air, I heard it for the first time A mystical whisper from the street below—- And gazed down to see gathered in the street The faces of ghostly luminaries, The changing identities of vagrant dark spirits And heard them murmuring many a charming remark— And knew at once the most fantastic moment had come upon the Village And fresh from the past came their brilliant visions brought, Talking, sometimes without words, the sounds made of quiet, Trembling in the air, sweet scented dreams and joyous the celebration And bearing the extraordinary news of a hard-fought revolution won— I saw Geoffrey Chaucer, Ezra Pound, Longfellow, Tennyson, Sylvia Plath, Emily Bronte, Leo Tolstoy and Emily Dickinson, There was Blake and Keats and Shelley and Kipling and Wells, Could it be? The crowd that had made the wonders of a timeless age? There Whitman and Poe and Twain and there Dickens and Melville Sapho, And I glimpsed the likes of Thomas Mann, Jane Austin, Shakespeare,Hemingway, Berryman, Milton, Homer, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Andr Gide, Proust, Rimbaud, Ben Jonson, Thomas Wolf, Dylan Thomas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thackeray, Eugene O'Neill, Oscar Wilde, Henry Trollope, Dostoyevsky. Was I asleep? I heard the sweet voices ring out below me in the street. I heard the words bursting from deep within, it trickled up out of their bones, Sometimes so faint I felt as though a book had opened the words like stones Hurled their cries up, and I knew at once the difference between the dreamer And the dream. The art and the artist and the beauty they made and born, The great art and the heroic deed marching through the street, And all were joyous singing and mouthing the words To the new beginning and the victory of the Timeless Age, And all looked quaint and friendly, such lovely ghosts and their bright faces Of Geoffrey Chaucer, Ezra Pound, Longfellow, Tennyson, Sylvia Plath, Emily Bronte, Leo Tolstoy and Emily Dickinson, There was Blake and Keats and Shelley and Kipling and Wells, There Whitman and Poe and Twain and there Dickens and Melville Sapho, Thomas Mann, Jane Austin, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Berryman, Milton, Homer, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Andr Gide, Proust, Rimbaud, Ben Jonson, Thomas Wolf, Dylan Thomas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thackeray, Eugene O'Neill, Oscar Wilde, Henry Trollope, Dostoyevsky. Was I asleep? I heard the sweet voices ring out below me in the street. I heard the words bursting from deep within, it trickled up out of their bones, Glowed down on the freckled streets of the East Village, Where the holy minutes burst with excitement, And from the soft shimmering white puddles of their loud, Outbursts sudden upon the city, brilliant shone bright, Flamed up across the century, loose like some wild animal caged, The joy sped through us all and the streets rang out with loud holy desires, The Great Age sprang up from the streets And called round the city, tapping on windows, Rapping on doors, crying out the news of an age born Of yesterday, so long ago, yet mysterious and unborn, Come upon them now and burning down in the cool light, The night and its merriment suddenly exploded in their skulls, Bright red flames flickered up in their eyes, Their wild ghoulish souls leaped forth And shimmered up in the shop windows And the dark sang with them, as they wandered the streets All night, all night these souls of darkness knocking on doors, Turning knobs, waking us, looking into our faces, Their bright ghostly round faces turning dim, And asking for so little, only that they we join them. The East Village set flying, and the dark mad streets Crying, the pale clouds of souls creeping Up the sides of tall buildings, fumbling For the primitive voice that would bear The perfect cool touch to wake the past, The wild fierce vast tenderness Like the sudden rumble of a train in our bones. Blasting our ears with the astonishment of great joys, The mad fits and the frenzied outbursts so dark And the dead animal joys, Scurrying through the dark mad streets, Mistaking the dark of a time for drunken fools,— The bliss of victory running through our veins, The fiery faces of drunken mirth, the rocking Of the streets, back and forth, the power That came from us like dream we could never remember, A vision of a world awakened and the ghostly lights of the holy city, A city in which we all lived secretly, now sudden Burst upon us, never to be forgotten again, Flickering inside us, now flung out, fallen Like the leaves, the gentle eyed streets Singing to us. Come from us, the wild beasts of the night, From our mouths came the wild peacocks cries, The rippling streets of sleep cool beneath us, swirling, The frenzied flashing lights of our dreaming souls, Our shadows wild and bending down to stir the streets, Awake, awake. We were all suddenly standing in the street, Screaming for mercy, the joy unbearable, biting our flesh, All of us dizzy, a hundred-feet tall black beasts with long legs, Kicking and dancing, calling, each of us dizzy and our animal faces Sang, we drank the night air. The spectacular flickering red suns Of tomorrow ran through us, licking the dampness of our souls, And the ghoulish pleasures, the furious whispers Drubbing us with enticements, the long breathless moments, Waiting for the great moment to come, The hideous sidewalks clacking out their passions And gone the years and their extraordinary appetites for lust and solitude, The loud brash little known dreams and melancholy visions A hundred thousand stark and subtle awakenings The loose limbering dance of time, and its schizophrenic rhapsody And mindless bliss, tempered by profound wakefulness, And the absence of insomnia and the apparitions of MacDougal Street, The pale minutes and their mystical night music— The firestorms of nocturnal provocative thoughts and temperamental fancies, Each dressed in silk and wildly calling us into the fire Which understood us like nothing else, It was marveling about us, the beautiful and delicate faces And so sweet and deep the meadows of our eyes, The darting downward, joyously sang along the hard Backs of the wild streets, calling from their strange countries, Gurgling in the streets like magical springs, Fountains of the wet intensely felt nothings so wet and delicious, The fragile charms that splashed us, the world shimmering Up in their tiny faces, the wide perceptions, the everywhere Of their smiles, the forever of their bright eyes, The soft petals that found their way into our flesh, Cool as red roses, the sweet fragrance of rivers, Streams bearing the last whispers that saved us, Redeemed us, forced us to see through the days, And the many wild frail touches That made us fearful of the smallest things. The streets dizzy, the once lazy, dark yawning boulevards, Now the mad drunken streets Rising and the streets stumbling forth— The joys of the celebration explosive, intriguing, Faintly disturbing, the rebirth of the city, Each of us calling, bending down, lifting up the streets, Shaking them like old rugs, the days flying off, The first wave of fear and sin gone, driven out, Back into the dark past. The bright faces of a thousand dead poets streaked With joy and their loud tumultuous cries Bright red flames flickered up in their eyes, Their wild ghoulish souls leaped forth, And shimmered up in the shop windows And the dark sang with them, as they wandered the streets All night, all night these souls of darkness knocking on doors, Turning knobs, waking us, looking into our faces, Their bright ghostly round faces turning dim, And asking for so little, only that they we join them.© Ernest Slyman
(originally appeared in Departure From Normal)