Who be kind to?
Who be kind to?
Be kind to yourself, only one,
and perishable of many on the planet.
Thou art that one that wishes
a soft finger
tracing the line of feel
ing from nipple to pubis.
One that wishes a tongue
to kiss your armpit,
a lip to kiss your cheek
inside your whiteness thigh
Be kind to yourself, Harry,
because unkindness comes
when the body explodes
Napalm, cancer, and the deathbed in Vietnam is
a strange place to dream of trees leaning over
and angry American faces grinning with
sleepwalk terror over your last eye
Be kind to yourself
because the bliss of your own kindness
will flood the police tomorrow
Because the cow weeps in the field
and the mouse weeps in the cat hole
Be kind to this place
which is your present habitation
With Derek and radar tower
and flower in the ancient brook
Be kind to your neighbor
who weeps solid tears
on the television sofa
He has no other home
and hears nothing
but the hard voice of telephones. Click. Bzzz.
Switch channel and the inspired melodrama
disappears and he's left
alone for the night.
He disappears in bed.
Be kind to your disappearing
mother and father
gazing out the terrace window
as milk truck and hearse turn the corner.
Be kind to the politician
weeping in the galleries of Whitehall, Kremlin, White House, Louvre, Phoenix City,
aged, large -nosed, angry, nervously dialing the bold voice box
connected to electrodes
underground
converging through wires vaster
than a kitten's eye can see on
the mushroom -shaped fear lobe
under the ear of the sleeping Dr. Einstein,
crawling with worms,
crawling with worms,
crawling with worms.
The hour has come.
Sick, dissatisfied, unloved,
the bulky foreheads of Captain, Premier,
President, Sir, Comrade, fear.
Be kind to the fearful one at your
side
who's remembering
the lamentations of the Bible
and the prophecies of the crucified Adam,
son of all the porters
and charred men of Belgravia.
Be kind to yourself
who weep under the
Moscow moon
and hide your bliss hairs under rain
coat and suede Levi's,
for this is a joy to be born.
The kindness received through strange
eyeglasses
on a bus through Kensington,
the finger touch of the Londoner on your thumb
that borrows light from your cigarette,
the smile of morning at Newcastle
Central Station
when long -haired Tom Blonde husband
greets the bearded stranger of telephones,
the boom -bomb that bounces
in the joyful bowels
as the Liverpool minstrels of Cavernsink
raise up their joyful voices
and guitars in electric Afric.
Hurrah for Jerusalem.
The saints come marching in.
Twist and shout and gates of Eden
are named in Albion again.
Hope sings a black psalm from Nigeria
and a white psalm echoes in Detroit
and re -echoes amplified from
Nottingham to Prague
and a Chinese psalm will be heard
if we all live our lives out
for the next six decades.
Be kind to the Chinese psalm
in the red transistor in your breast.
Be kind to Monk Thelonious
in the five spot
who plays lone chord
bangs on his vast piano
lost in space on a stool
and hearing himself
in this nightclub universe.
Be kind to the heroes
who have lost their names
in the newspaper
And hear only their own
supplication
for the peaceful kiss of sex
in the giant auditoriums of the planet
Nameless voices crying
for kindness
in the orchestra
Screaming in anguish that bliss come true
And sparrows sing another
hundred years
to white -haired babes
and poets be fools of their own desire.
Oh, Anacreon and Angelic Shelley,
guide these new -nippled generations
on spaceships
to Mars' next universe.
The prayer is to man and girl,
the only gods,
the only lords of kingdoms of feeling,
Christs of their own living ribs.
Bicycle chain and machine gun,
fear, sneer, and smell cold logic
of the dream bomb have come to Saigon,
Johannesburg, Dominica City, Phnom Penh,
Pentagon, Paris, and Lhasa.
Ah, be kind to the universe of self
that trembles and shudders and thrills
in twentieth century,
that opens its eyes and belly and breast
chained with flesh
to feel the myriad flowers of bliss
that I am to thee a dream, a dream.
I don't want to be alone.
I want to know that I am loved.
I want the orgy of our flesh,
orgy of all eyes happy,
orgy of the soul kissing
and blessing its mortal grown body,
orgy of tenderness beneath the neck,
orgy of kindness to thigh and vagina.
Desire given with meat,
hand, and cock.
Desire taken with mouth and ass.
Desire returned to the last sigh.
Be kind to the poor soul
that cries in a crack of the pavement
because he has no body.
Prayers to the ghosts and demons,
the lacklustres of capitals and
congresses
who make sadistic noises on
the radio.
...statue destroyers and
tank captains,
unhappy murderers in Mekong
and Stanleyville.
For a new kind of man has
come to his bliss.
To end the Cold War,
he has borne against his own kind flesh
since the days of the snake."
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
