April 26, 2008

Today's poem is from Tau and Journey to the End, just published by City Lights Publishers. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Read more about this book.

Also on Poets.org

West Coast Poets
• Hay for the Horses
by Gary Snyder
• Gic to Har
by Kenneth Rexroth
• Howl, Parts I & II
by Allen Ginsberg

Related Prose
• A Brief Guide to the San Francisco Renaissance

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Untitled [To see this evil from its core]
by Philip Lamantia

To see this evil from its core
He spent himself on margins
Crystal edges umbra-ed and broke,
Splintering by measured denials,
Waiting for the hour patience intersected:
The giver capsuled whole the spending parts.

O Mad Love where untempered
You remain, tunneling trains of art—
Deflecting horizonless
                               depthless

Light
        on this voice—these sounds—
A heart whose wails you dream
Into actuality swims halfway
To your always perilous obliqued and
Always
         vanished
                    shore.