Weekend Assignment #105: Poetry in Motion
| It's time to get a little bit cultured here at the Weekend Assignment: |
Dear John,
Poet Laureate of San Francisco Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem “Christ Climbed Down” was one of the first poems that wasn't required reading for course work that I fell in love with. At the age of 15. Only eight short years after it was first published. By a poet living and well respected by his contemporaries. Notorious, due to his being Allen Ginsberg's domestic publisher and indicted co-conspirator in the censorship trial concerning HOWL! Who I heard read said poem at Columbia University one weekend evening when I was supposedly “staying with a friend” in Greenwich Village. Best hooky I ever played. Even better than that time I got the ride of my life by Shelly on the back of a dappled gray gelding ... and that's saying something!
Of course, it lead to things like hanging out in coffee houses and bookstores, listening to other poets. Tuli Kupferberg. Allen Ginsberg's HOWL! had me from the first stanza. Dennis Nurkse, the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, and other “beat poets” of the day.
Without further discussion...
CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candy canes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powder blue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carolers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
ice skated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings
This is from A Coney Island of the Mind, Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
a New Directions Book, Copyright ©1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
You had to ask, didn't you? My best regards to your gals. Congrats on all the wonderful things that have been happening in your life of late. I'm envious. No question about it.
Wil
P.S. Extree Credit, Read All About It: Snoozelets
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