I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph

Taxi September along Jessore Road Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load past watery fields thru rain flood ruts Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts Wet processions Families walk Stunted boys big heads don't talk Look bony skulls & silent round eyes Starving black angels in human disguise.

We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

The closet door is open for me, where I left it, since I left it open, it has graciously stayed open.

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

We are all exposed to the flash bulb of death.