Sunflower Sutra

Written by Alan Ginsberg

I walked on the banks o the tincan banana dock and
   sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
   Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
   box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
   pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
   of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
   surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
   machinery/
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
   sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
   stream, no hermit in those mounts, just
   ourselves rheumy-eyed and hungover like
   old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
   shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
   dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
I rushed up enchanted--it was my first Sunflower,
   memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joe's
   Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
   treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
   poem of the riverbank, condoms and pots, steel
   knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
   and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
   past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
   crackly bleak and dusty with smut and smoke
   of olden locomotives in its eye--
carolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
   a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
   soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air,
   sun-rays obliterated on its hairy like a dried
   wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
   from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
   fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my Sunflower O
   my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
   locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
   skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
   mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or
   protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt-industrial-
   modern-all that civilization spotting your
   crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
   eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
   home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
   bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
   of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
   tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
   more could I name, the smoke ashes of some
   cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
   milky breasts of cars, worn-out asses of chairs
   and sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
   standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
   in your form!
A perfect beauty of a Sunflower!  A perfect excellent
   lovely Sunflower existence!  A sweet natural eye
   to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
   grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
   monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
   grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
   railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower?  When did you forget you were a
   flower?  When did you look at your skin and
   decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
   The ghost of a locomotive?  The specter and shade
   of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
   Sunflower!
And you locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
   not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick Sunflower and stuck
   it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
   too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
   bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
   beautiful golden Sunflowers inside, we're blessed
   by our own seed and golden hairy naked accomplishment--
   bodies growing into mad black formal Sunflowers
   in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the
   shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset
   Frisco hilly tincan evening sitting down vision.

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