Across the Universe: Ginsberg, Shelley, Lennon

I ran across this video around the blogosphere somewhere - on Ron Silliman's blog, perhaps, or the Allen Ginsberg Project - and was really taken with it.  An all access cable show, buried deep in the Internet archive, this hasn't gotten much play and it deserves to.  This is around the time - the 90s - when Allen was very taken with song and some of these work better than others.  Some fine work here and, of course, it's Allen.

What really struck me in this show was his remarks regarding Shelley which just set off a sparkling of synapses (synapsi?), as he quoted the following lines from Ode to the West Wind:

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

I immediately, for some reason, thought of John Lennon's remarkable song "Across the Universe."   Ginsberg's take here on shedding ambition and changing the world, on poetry's place in that world, threads these two apparently unrelated pieces together for me.  Here's how he puts it:

"I keep thinking there must be some mighty rhythm with the right words that would penetrate through all consciousness and wake earth up to its terrific non-transcendent living possibility of having a continuing destiny."

"Doesn't everybody have that?  ... I did, since I was a kid. ... Or penetrate through the world with some great song, cry, mantra, or poem like Shelley (in Ode to the West Wind)...

Here's the Shelley and Lennon, side by side.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND by: Percy Bysshe Shelley

I. 

O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

 

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until

Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)

With living hues and odors plain and hill:

 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

 

II.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,

Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

 

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

On the blue surface of thine airy surge,

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

 

Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height,

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,

Vaulted with all thy congregated might

 

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!

 

III.

 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,

Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers

Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,

And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!

 

IV.

 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free

Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even

I were as in my boyhood, and could be

 

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

 

V.

 

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is;

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

 

Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unwakened earth

 

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

 

 

 

Across the Universe by John Lennon

 

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of earth are ringing
Through my open views inviting and inciting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a
Million suns, it calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

 

Thanks, Allen, as always, for that incredible mind.


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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #163, July 2008.   The poem is from one Beat poet to another: Diane di Prima on Joanne Kyger:

   Poetry Reading, Santa Cruz

slats of light on Joanne's hair
don't move as she dances
reading her poem

       Diane di Prima

plum blossom scent--
through a needle's eye
the light

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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