Poem of the Week

From Kaddish
by Allen Ginsberg

IV

O mother
what have I left out
O mother
what have I forgotten
farewell
with a long black shoe
farewell
with Communist Party and a broken stocking
farewell
with six dark hairs on the wen of your breast
farewell
with your old dress and a long black beard around the vagina
farewell
with your sagging belly
with your fear of Hitler
with your mouth of bad short stories
with your fingers of rotten mandolins
with your arms of fat Paterson porches
with your belly of strikes and smokestacks
with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish War
with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers
with your nose of bad lay with your nose of the smell of the
pickles of Newark
with your eyes
with your eyes of Russia
with your eyes of no money
with your eyes of false China
with your eyes of Aunt Elanor
with your eyes of starving India
with your eyes pissing in the park
with your eyes of America taking a fall
with your eyes of your failure at the piano
with your eyes of your relatives in California
with your eyes of Ma Rainey dying in an ambulance
with your eyes of Czechoslovakia attacked by robots
with your eyes going to painting class at night in the Bronx
with your eyes of the killer Grandma you see on the horizon
from the Fire-Escape
with your eyes running naked out of the apartment screaming
into the hall
with your eyes being led away by policemen into an ambulance
with your eyes strapped down on the operating table
with your eyes with the pancreas removed
with your eyes of appendix operation
with your eyes of abortion
with your eyes of ovaries removed
with your eyes of shock
with your eyes of lobotomy
with your eyes of divorce
with your eyes of stroke
with your eyes alone
with your eyes
with your eyes
with your Death full of Flowers

---

Of all the poetry Allen Ginsberg has written, none has touched me as much as Kaddish, a long poem written in response to the death of his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, who passed away after a schizophrenic collapse in 1956. This section, part IV of a five-part poem, is a litany that is beautifully honest in its portrayal of the end of human life; it tells the secrets of our bodies we would never like to share, and it tells the ugliness of us all. Ginsberg doesn’t glorify his mother— Naomi is not beautiful or perfect in her death. She is, instead, a sack of bones and flaccid flesh. Ginsberg writes about her “sagging belly” and “pissing in the park”; he talks about her fallen body, from the “six black hairs” on her breasts and “arms of fat Paterson porches,” to the “belly of strikes and smokestacks” and “long black beard around the vagina”; he discusses her deteriorating mind with “Czechoslovakia attacked by robots,” the “killer Grandma,” and of her “running naked out of the apartment screaming/into the hall.”

And yet, in spite of his honesty, the language of this poem is incredibly beautiful. “Fingers of rotten mandolins” is a line that stops you in your tracks— it is so strange, so new, and yet so perfect to describe the fat, knobby fingers I can imagine his mother having. We get the sense that Naomi was a kind and caring person; for all her faults she still sung “for the decaying overbroken workers,” rode with her dying mother in an ambulance, and went to painting class at night. The repetition of “your eyes,” conveying both the positive and negative aspects of Ginsberg’s mother and her life, allow us to see how much he must have loved her. It is as if, looking down at her body, Ginsberg sees his mother’s entire life laid out in front of him— the good times and the bad— and poetically draws a picture of everything Naomi was: fat; poor; pitying of those less fortunate; remembering Russia; Communist; seeing America; suffering through the death of her own mother; afraid of Hitler; afraid of the world; living in New Jersey; paranoid; sick; operated on; divorced; having a stroke; being a painter; and, in the end, dying alone. It is not a glamorous picture, omitting the bad stuff and painting her up with words as one would a doll, but it is an honest one. To me, that is what makes this poem so beautiful. It is human, acknowledging our faults but not condemning us for them. It even finds the strange loveliness of our imperfections. And, even though Naomi— like the rest of us one day will— suffered, died, and was buried, she is remembered well. After all, the last line Ginsberg gives us is how she will forever be remembered— not with lobotomies or hysterectomies or abortions or strokes— but with her “Death full of Flowers,” a capitalized line that almost smiles at you, a garden filled with sunflowers, as gorgeous and alive as the life she lived.

Like Keats says, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Ginsberg reminds us that that’s all we need to know.

- Christina Squitieri

Image courtesy of CityLightsLover
Poem courtesy of The Pocket Poets Series