Book of Sketches (21 page)

A priest who looks exactly
like Bing Crosby but with a long gray beard,
chewing bread, then rushes out, with beret and
briefcase. . . . .

Now, on sidewalk in
sun, the racket of going-to-work same as
in Houston or in Boston and no better —
But it is a vast promise I feel here, endless
streets, stores, girls, places, meanings, I can
see why Americans stay here —
First
man in Paris I looked at was a dignified
Negro gentleman in a homburg
— The human
types are endless, old French ladies, Malayan
girls, schoolboys, blond student boys, tall
young brunettes, hippy pimply secretaries,
beret’d goggled clerks, beret’d scarved
earners of milk bottles, dikes in long blue
laboratory coats, frowning older students striding
in trench coats like Boston, seedy little
rummy cops fishing thru their pockets (in
blue caps), cute pony tailed blondes in high
heels with zip notebooks, goggled bicyclists
with motors attached, bespectacled homburgs
walking reading Le Parisien, bushy headed
mulattos with long cigarettes in mouth,

 

old ladies carrying milkcans & shopping bags,
rummy WCFieldses spitting in the gutter hands
a pockets going to their printing shop for
another day, a young Chinese looking French
girl of 12 with separated teeth looking
Like she’s in tears (frowning, & with a bruise
on her shin, schoolbooks in hand, cute and
serious like Mardou), porkpie executive
running and catching bus sensationally
vanishing with it, mustached long haired
Italian youths, regular types coming in
the bar for their morning shot of wine,
huge bumbling bankers in expensive suits
fishing for newspaper pennies in their
palms (bumping into women at the bus
stop), piped jews with packages, a
lovely redhead with dark glasses pip pip
pip on her heels trots to work bus, a
waitress slopping mop water in the old old
gutter, ravishing brunettes with tightfitting
skirts succeeding in making you want to
grab their rounded ass (tho they dont deign
to look), goofely plup plup schoolgirlies
with long boyish bobs plirping lips over
books & memorizing lessons fidgetly, lovely
young girls of 17 on corners who walk
off with low-heeled sure-strides in long
red coats to downtown Paris smokepot
Old Napoleon wonders — leading a dog,
an apparent East Indian, whistling, with
books — bearded bus riders riding to
accounting school — dark similar-lipped
serious young lovers, boy arming girlshoulders
— statue of Danton pointing nowhere —

 

— Paris hepcat in dark glasses waiting there,
faintly mustached — little suited boy in
black beret, with well off father — English
Flag waving, red and white crisscrossing on
a blue field — (for Queen’s visit)

Sitting in a little park in Place Paul Painlevé
— a curving row of beautiful rosy tulips rigid
and swaying, fat shaggy sparrows, beautiful
shorthaired mademoiselles (one shd. never be
alone at night in Paris, boy or girl, but I’m
an evil old man & world hater who will
become the greatest writer who ever lived)

— Seine outside, Carrousel Bridge, gray
rain clouds, pushing overhead, blue sky
holes, Seine ripple silver, old dark
stone & houses, distant domes, skeletal
Eiffel, people on sidewalks like Guardini’s
little brushstroke people — (with black
dot heads) — In this Vast hall where I
sit, more’n 600 feet long, with dream
giant canvases everywhere, the murmur
blur of hundreds of voices — Seine waters
restlessly greening near the bridge, trees
blooming, tomorrow London —

Downtown London Spring 1957 (sketch) —
hammering of iron, banging of planks, a
drill, rrrttt, humbuzz of traffic, morble
of voices, peet of bird, dling of wrench
falling on pavement (or of bolt screwer),
truck going brruawp, squeak of brakes,
the impersonal bangbang & beep beep
of London still building long after
Shakespeare & Blake lie bedded in
stone & sheep — April in London,
Where is Gray?

Brain trees growing out of Shakespeare’s fields
— dreaming meadows full of lamb-dots —
The dreary town of St. Denys, a church with a
pasted-on concrete arch on the roof, the
crowded row of redbrick houses, old man in
a garden blossoming a new English Spring
which seems to me hope-devoid. . . . .

 

SOUTHHAMPTON — ridiculous little boxcars in the
yards . . . cranes in the haze . . . cyclists . . .
little boy sitting a wall horse style, with boots
... fweet of our engine —

For a long time I didnt notice that
a big dog was laying in the grass
six feet behind me, completely
licenseless, no collar, naked &
glad the true dog sleeps, when
I call him he pays no attention,
right in the middle of the city
park he stretches & enjoys —
Meanwhile 2 little girls play
with a ball (too small to throw
it) as the mother waits patiently
standing with shopping bag — 2
boys kick the soccer ball &
then quit, one falls flat on
his back in the grass arms outspread
to the sky while the other
dances little steps & sings —
An ordinary man carrying an
empty pail — Two guys pulling
a roll truck with one tire on
it, talking — A little boy
comes by playing with a
plastic bottle tied around
his neck with straps —
Gangs of little children
rush up to push the park-
worker’s lawnmower with
him, he grins — A dark
Mexican kid with handfulstring
of huge balloons blowing
his little air tweeter —
The dog is up, near the
ball boys, watching nobly —
he hops on 3 legs, his right
front foot is broken or hurt,
now he hops up to see a
ragged boy’s white dog on
rope leash & a short fight
breaks out — The little boy
brings his dog over to tell me
the whole story (in Spanish)
of his wounds & bravery —
The ordinary man returns with
full pail, hobbling — The mother
& little girls, sit now on the
old iron cannon, she reads
as they crawl gladly — (I’m not
interested much in sex anymore, but
in that mother smiling patiently while
the little girls play)

The strange Allen Ansen-looking
but fat chubby Mexican beggar standing
in front of Woolworth’s on Coahuila
behaving spastically, with short haircut
of bangs, brown suitcoat, white shirt,
big pot belly, rocking back & forth
jiggling his hand (left or right, as / according
to which other he rests in his pocket)
& he really makes it, / I just saw 3 people give him
money in one minute, as one
charitied him he turned away &
scratched his brow (murmured something?)
— He cant conceive that
someone (as I) can be watching from
across the street 2nd story window
& so I see all his in-between
actions & attitudes, a definite
(holy) phoney, (I mean his
life is harder than mine by far),
when it came time for him to
blow his nose after sneezing
he didnt shake spastically
but efficiently withdrew a
napkin from his coat & blew
his nose
hard
3 times then
put it back in his pocket
— Even poor women give him
coins & he places all of them
in a funny space behind his back
belt — His feet are tired, he
whomps them up in a dance &
down —

 

When fat businessman glides
by blowing smoke contemptly
at him he hangs his head in
contemplative shame — He
looks up, scratches his neck,
feels his coat pocket, sways,
& waits beneath the light
(as I)
(Who’ve just finished a T-bone
steak
in Kuku’s)

 

Above him I see dim
figures in the Woolworth
storerooms as of dance-
class-ing & mamboing

 

Being as I am now off drugs,
after a fine meal I feel like
I did as a kid in Lowell, an
excited happy mind — It’s
Saturday in Mex City & the streets
lead to all kinds of fascinating
lighted vistas, movies, stores, pepsi
colas, whorehouses, nightclubs,
children playing in brownstreet
lamps & the sleep of the
Fellaheen dog in some old
grand doorway

 

YES, the end to a perfect meal
is always the grand cup of
black coffee, here or in
Sweets Seafood Restaurant, NY
or in Paree, anywhere, the
warm rich comforter (which
prepares the appetite for chocolates
on the homeward walk, preferably
milk chocolate & nuts) —
It’s the exciting hour in MCity
or anycity, 8 on Sat nite, when
the 5 & 10’s closing & the show
crowds rush & newsboys shout,
trolley bells clang, like soft
like Lowell long ago when
I had that swarming vision

PENGUIN POETS

JOHN ASHBERY
Selected Poems
Self-Portrait in a
Convex Mirror

TED BERRIGAN
The Sonnets

JIM CARROLL
Fear of Dreaming:
The Selected Poems
Living at the Movies
Void of Course
ALISON HAWTHORNE
DEMING
Genius Loci

CARL DENNIS
New and Selected
Poems 1974-2004
Practical Gods
Ranking the Wishes

DIANE DI PRIMA
Loba

STUART DISCHELL
Dig Safe

STEPHEN DOBYNS
Mystery, So Long
Velocities:
New and Selected
Poems: 1966-1992

AMY GERSTLER
Crown of Weeds
Ghost Girl
Nerve Storm

EUGENE GLORIA
Drivers at the Short-
Time Motel
Hoodlum Birds

DEBORA GREGER
Desert Fathers,
Uranium Daughters
God
Western Art

TERRANCE HAYES
Hip Logic
Wind in a Box

ROBERT HUNTER
Sentinel and Other
Poems

MARY KARR
Viper Rum

JACK KEROUAC
Book of Blues
Book of Haikus
Book of Sketches

ANN LAUTERBACH
Hum
If in Time:
Selected Poems,
1975-2000
On a Stair

CORINNE LEE
PYX

PHYLLIS LEVIN
Mercury

WILLIAM LOGAN
Macbeth in Venice
Night Battle
The Whispering
Gallery

MICHAEL MCCLURE
Huge Dreams:
San Francisco
and Beat Poems

DAVID MELTZER
David’s Copy:
The Selected Poems
of David Meltzer

CAROL MUSKE
An Octave Above
Thunder
Red Trousseau

ALICE NOTLEY
The Descent of Alette
Disobedience
Mysteries of Small
Houses

PATTIANN ROGERS
Generations

STEPHANIE
STRICKLAND
V: WaveSon.nets/
Losing L’una

ANNE WALDMAN
Kill or Cure
Marriage: A Sentence
Structure of the
World Compared
to a Bubble

JAMES WELCH
Riding the Earthboy
40

PHILIP WHALEN
Overtime: Selected
Poems

ROBERT WRIGLEY
Lives of the Animals
Reign of Snakes

MARK YAKICH
Unrelated Individuals
Forming a Group
Waiting to Cross

JOHN YAU
Borrowed Love Poems