Way Out West
By Amiri Baraka
(For Gary Snyder)
As simple an act
as opening the eyes. Merely
coming into things by degrees.
Morning: some tear is broken
on the wooden stairs
of my lady’s eyes. Profusions
of green. The leaves. Their
constant prehensions. Like old
junkies on Sheridan Square, eyes
cold and round. There is a song
Nat Cole sings . . . This city
& the intricate disorder
of the seasons.
Unable to mention
something as abstract as time.
Even so, (bowing low in thick
smoke from cheap incense; all
kinds questions filling the mouth,
till you suffocate & fall dead
to opulent carpet.) Even so,
shadows will creep over your flesh
& hide your disorder, your lies.
There are unattractive wild ferns
outside the window
where the cats hide. They yowl
from there at nights. In heat
& bleeding on my tulips.
Steel bells, like the evil
unwashed Sphinx, towing in the twilight.
Childless old murderers, for centuries
with musty eyes.
I am distressed. Thinking
of the seasons, how they pass,
how I pass, my very youth, the
ripe sweet of my life; drained off . . .
Like giant rhesus monkeys;
picking their skulls,
with ingenious cruelty
sucking out the brains.
No use for beauty
collapsed, with moldy breath
done in. Insidious weight
of cankered dreams. Tiresias’
weathered cock.
Walking into the sea, shells
caught in the hair. Coarse
waves tearing the tongue.
Closing the eyes. As
simple an act. You float
