Selection of poems which were read simultaneously during 72 hours non-stop in Paris, Boston, London and New York - all organized by a young English poet: Richard Hallward, from a public telephone booth in Paris, with "prefaces" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Eric Mottram, David Applewood, Richard Hallward, T. Wignesan and George Whitman (owner of the famed Shakespeare & Co. in Paris).

Way out over Copland's "Appalachian Springs"

We dragged the slopes to our feet.
On the summit, we burnt our clothes
for wood and there shuffled our feet
in the hush of the falling snow.

We had come out of the scuffed grass.

With one look back in unbelief
exhuming the long trek
.....................................the silent keen
................puffing through blubbery fingers.
We pulled the hoofed trail through
the trapdoor of our unchained links
................foisting for new heights.

Beyond the Appalachian Mountains
the hanging fern on pine dripped snow
on moles burrowing in gashed hollows.

We paused. In that doubtful moment
we rued the climb, succumbing to the assault
upon this stilled millennia’s eerie silence.

All that time the swivelling blizzards raged
............shifting soil, eroding avalanches.
Below, burgeoning customs
............unmaned the silent dignity of bisons.
All bore testimony to a familiar preparation.

And then, suddenly before our eyes
the solemn ground rose with the breeze
the spangled map changing to the quick:

.............Chicago Pittsburgh Kansas City
.............wild barnyards dry-coughing, pop-corning garages
............horrent timber ribbed the coasting steamboats
........................................the linoleum walls
.............the mild Indian piqued he was
.............by the mahogany cubism of our speech.

We wondered if coming so far
only mattered, we would be content
to build a fire, here and now
and unpack our horses.

We saw little need to go on.

One night the summit might open
up and swallow us all or old age
would come upon us like a lonely neighbour
on a pretext to the door.


© T.Wignesan 1964
London, U.K.
[from the collection: "tell them I'm gone", 1983; & published in Fire Readings (A Collection of Contemporary Writing from the Shakespeare & Company Fire Benefit Readings). Ed. by Applewood, Hallward, Mottram, Wignesan. Paris-Boston: Frank Books, 1991, pp. 36-37.]

Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2012