Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event.

We feel the machine slipping from our hands As if someone else were steering; If we see light at the end of the tunnel, It's the light of the oncoming train.

Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility slides by on grease.

We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.

Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone; peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heel of small war--until the end of time to police the earth, a ghost orbiting forever lost in our monotonous sublime

It's a completely powerful and serious book, as good as anything in prose or poetry written by a 'beat' writer, and one of the most alive books written by any American for years. I don't see how it could be considered immoral.

If youth is a defect, it is one we outgrow too soon.