Poem by Irwin Allen Ginsberg

To Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose—now—might I see you
with your thin face and buck tooth smile and pain
                    of rheumatism—and a long black heavy shoe
                            for your bony left leg
  limping down the long hall in Newark on the running carpet
                    past the black grand piano
                            in the day room
                                    where the parties were
            and I sang Spanish loyalist songs
                    in a high squeaky voice
                            (hysterical) the committee listening
                    while you limped around the room
                            collected the money—
  Aunt Honey, Uncle Sam, a stranger with a cloth arm
                    in his pocket
                        and huge young bald head
                          of Abraham Lincoln Brigade


—your long sad face
            your tears of sexual frustration
                    (what smothered sobs and bony hips
                          under the pillows of Osborne Terrace)
  —the time I stood on the toilet seat naked
            and you powdered my thighs with calamine
                    against the poison ivy—my tender
                          and shamed first black curled hairs
  what were you thinking in secret heart then
                    knowing me a man already—
  and I an ignorant girl of family silence on the thin pedestal
                    of my legs in the bathroom—Museum of Newark.


                                  Aunt Rose
  Hitler is dead, Hitler is in Eternity; Hitler is with
                    Tamburlane and Emily Brontë


Though I see you walking still, a ghost on Osborne Terrace
                    down the long dark hall to the front door
            limping a little with a pinched smile
                    in what must have been a silken
                                          flower dress
    welcoming my father, the Poet, on his visit to Newark
                    —see you arriving in the living room
                          dancing on your crippled leg
                      and clapping hands his book
                          had been accepted by Liveright


Hitler is dead and Liveright’s gone out of business
The Attic of the Past and Everlasting Minute are out of print
                    Uncle Harry sold his last silk stocking
            Claire quit interpretive dancing school
                    Buba sits a wrinkled monument in Old
                          Ladies Home blinking at new babies


last time I saw you was the hospital
            pale skull protruding under ashen skin
                    blue veined unconscious girl
                          in an oxygen tent
            the war in Spain has ended long ago
                          Aunt Rose

1. Plutonian Ode
2. The Blue Angel
3. In the Baggage Room at Greyhound
4. My Sad Self
5. America

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