üheksateistkümnes

AN ASPHODEL

O dear sweet rosy
           unattainable desire
...how sad, no way
           to change the mad
cultivated asphodel, the
           visible reality...

and skin's appalling
           petals--how inspired
to be so Iying in the living
           room drunk naked
and dreaming, in the absence
           of electricity...
over and over eating the low root
           of the asphodel,
gray fate...

           rolling in generation
on the flowery couch
           as on a bank in Arden--
my only rose tonite's the treat
           of my own nudity.

                                 Fall, 1953

(Allen Ginsberg. Howl and other poems. 1956, 1959)