POETRY: Allen Ginsberg's 'Vision 1948'

Dread spirit in my that I ever tryWith written words to move, Hear thou my plea, at last reply To my impotent pen: Should I endure, and never prove Yourself and me in love, Tell me, spirit, tell me, O what then?

And if not love, why, then, another passion For me to pass in image: Shadow, shadow, and blind vision. Dumb roar of the white trance, Ecstatic shadow out of rage, Power out of passage. Dance, dance, spirit, spirit, dance!

Is it my fancy that the world is still, So gentle in her dream? Outside, great Harlems of the will Move under black sleep: Yet in spiritual scream, The saxophones the same As me in madness call thee from the deep.

I shudder with intelligence and I Wake in the deep light And hear a vast machinery Descending without sound, Intolerable to me, too bright, And shaken in the sight The eye goes blind before the world goes round.

East Harlem, July 1948