Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poems

The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
...

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
...

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
...

Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
...

It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light
...

Don't let that horse
         eat that violin
cried Chagall's mother
...

Night closed my windows and
The sky became a crystal house
The crystal windows glowed
The moon
...

There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
...

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where i first
fell in love
with unreality
...

Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto
...