Poem of the Week - Song (by Allen Ginsberg)

This may be the last post I submit until my final two weeks of classes are over: Dead week (Pre-finals) and Finals week. I have many papers due and study... and these will be my last formal education papers in one or two years, while I study languages and the GRE in Mexico.

Saying this, a question arises in my head:

"If I'm Mexican, what am I doing studying English poetry?"

Well, this is very hard to answer. I don't know why it happened, I just know that it did. I know I'm speaking in very personal terms here, but hey! Poetry is personal, and without the human element, it's simply a computer's try at meaning, shooting words at random and not having soul or anything (Like talking to false computer dates who respond in broken English and say they are from Russia... no, this hasn't happened to me, I read it in an article in Scientific American Psychology).

Yes, I know I drifted...

So why am I studying English poetry? Well, I will make a confession in my blog.

I used to be a Physics major...

... *waits for the "That's such a change!!!" comments*

And I came to the United States mostly because my parents told me the education here is better than in Mexico. I didn't know what to choose or what to follow in my life. I just wanted to please my parents, but after two years of lying to myself, I woke up and changed my major from Physics to English... I honestly felt like I could breathe again... I was born again in my Junior year, Fall 2008.

I don't know why I came to poetry. I don't know why many things happen, actually. They just do. I've been looking for a Claddagh ring online, and suddenly the Claddagh ring came to me in a Stillwater tent, with a lady selling jewelry for both men and women (and my ring size being 7, I was trying to look for not-so-girly apparel).

I wrote poetry before I knew I was going to be a poet.

I spoke English fluently since I was a kid without knowing that I would spend 4 years and a half of my life in the United States. I seem that I don't look for anything, really, but the world seems to open on itself, and the universe arranges everything as it should be.

Maybe I'm being too self-centered, but that;s life, isn't it? We all have individual voices in our writings, and we either drift (like me) or get to the point in a second.

I have faith that I will come to the United States again, but my time is not now. I still need to learn how to drive, and I really want a year off from school.

Ah! I look back at how pretty my apparent stream of consciousness works. This is how I get to know myself, actually.

I want you to leave you guys with a poem that made me cry in a dream. I swear I was dreaming that I was reading it, and tears flowed out of my eyes into the real world... what a beautiful image! The memory can make us cry even when we don't want to.

It's called Song, and it was written by Allen Ginsberg. I just love the sounds and the feeling, and the truth behind it. I wish I could kiss the poem, make it mine, I'm not sure... (hopefully my partner won't be jealous of another man's writing). Here it is!

Song
by Allen Ginsberg


The weight of the world
     is love.
Under the burden
     of solitude,
under the burden
     of dissatisfaction

     the weight,
the weight we carry
     is love.

Who can deny?
     In dreams
it touches
     the body,
in thought
     constructs
a miracle,
     in imagination
anguishes
     till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
     burning with purity--
for the burden of life
     is love,

but we carry the weight
     wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
     at last,
must rest in the arms
     of love.

No rest
     without love,
no sleep
     without dreams
of love--
     be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
     or machines,
the final wish
     is love
--cannot be bitter,
     cannot deny,
cannot withhold
     if denied:

the weight is too heavy

     --must give
for no return
     as thought
is given
     in solitude
in all the excellence
     of its excess.

The warm bodies
     shine together
in the darkness,
     the hand moves
to the center
     of the flesh,
the skin trembles
     in happiness
and the soul comes
     joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
     that's what
I wanted,
     I always wanted,
I always wanted,
     to return
to the body
     where I was born.

                         San Jose, 1954