It is time after thirty years
We had our Poetry Renaissance
Rise, Children of Albion, rise!
It is time after nightmares of sleep
When we walked the streets of inner cities
Our poems among the burnt-out houses
And cars, whispering compassion
To the addicts shaking and the homeless
Waking and those who have come apart
In the nowhere of today
Begging in stations
Sleeping in boxes.
It is time to find
Our lost, those children
I taught three decades ago
To paint on ceilings
With sticks of incense
Rainbows of silence
For John Cage
To write on walls
In luminous paint
Pink haiku
For Allen Ginsberg.
It is time to awaken and emblazon the sky
With symphonies of sorrow,
To draft the articles of war.
Poets of the Underground
The doors have opened
The ghost of Walt Whitman
Grey-bearded, in lonely anguish
Walks with us.
