Ferlinghetti Memorial Supplement ~ The Poet’s Eye

The Poet’s Eye Obscenely Seeing

THE POET’S EYE OBSCENELY SEEING.

The poet’s eye obscenely seeing

sees the surface of the round world

with its drunk rooftops

and wooden oiseaux on clotheslines

and its clay mules und females

with hot legs and rosebud breasts

in rollaway beds

and its trees full of mysteries

and it’s Sunday parks and speechless statues

and its America

with its ghost towns and empty Ellis Islands

and its surrealist landscape of

mindless prairies

supermarket suburbs

Steamheated cemeteries

and protesting cathedrals

a kissproof world of plastic toiletseats tampax and taxis

drugged store cowboys and las vegas virgins

disowned indians and cinemad matrons

unroman senators and conscientious non-objectors

And all the other fatal shorn-up fragments

Of the immigrant’s dream come too true

And mislaid

Among the sunbathers