Sometime During Eternity Poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Sometime During Eternity
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hep
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad
And moreover
he adds
It's all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won't even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
ninteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You're hot
they tell him
And they cool him
They stretch him on the Tree to cool
And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is THE king cat
who's got to blow
or they can't quite make it
Only he don't come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead
One of the real nuggets of the Beat lexicon. A real classic of the Beat Generation.
Personally it was, I felt, a piece of prose in the vernacular It retold a story in simple terms It not do it for me as a reader of poetry as a writer it sparked my interest Did I like it no was it worth reading yes so in all pretty mixed feelings.
Really an interesting story written with a tinge of humour. A beautiful creation.....
Fantastic poem! Read it in college and have never forgotten it. Love to discuss it some day, My phone is: 530-525-4245. Terry - I was a friend of Tom Reid and John Reid both of whom I believe you knew in the 1950's.
Starting like a mythological story, the poem meanders to the bizarre and realities of the present day living with philosophical undertones. Thanks.
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12/7/2024 2:48:33 PM # 1.0.0
It is a rather biased poem in all its state, but nevertheless, you are entitled to your opinion. I found it a bit more prose-like than I prefer. Overall, it was not easy figuring the indistinguishable change in tone, which I think I may have found, if I'm right.