plutonian ode

• plutona kaside:
  
  what new element before us unborn in nature? is there
  a new thing under the sun?
  at last inquisitive whitman a modern epic, detonative,
  scientific theme
  first penned unmindful by doctor seaborg with poisonous hand,
  named for death's planet through the
  sea beyond uranus
  whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared lord of
  hades, sire of avenging furies, billionaire hell-
  king worshipped once
  with black sheep throats cut, priests's face averted from
  underground mysteries in single temple at eleusis,
  spring-green persephone nuptialed to his inevitable
  shade, demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew,
  her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow,
  black hail, grey winter rain or polar ice, immemorable seasons
  before fish flew in heaven,
  before a ram died by the starry bush,
  before the bull stamped sky and earth
  or twins inscribed their memories in clay or crab'd flood
  washed memory from the skull, or lion sniffed the
  lilac breeze in eden--
  before the great year began turning its twelve signs,
  ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousand
  sunny years
  slowly round their axis in sagittarius, one hundred
  sixty-seven thousand times returning to this night
  
  radioactive nemesis were you there at the beginning
  black dumb tongueless unsmelling blast of disillusion?
  i manifest your baptismal word after four billion years
  i guess your birthday in earthling night, i salute your
  dreadful presence last majestic as the gods,
  sabaot, jehova, astapheus, adonaeus, elohim, iao,
  ialdabaoth, aeon from aeon born ignorant in an abyss of light,
  sophia's reflections glittering thoughtful galaxies, whirlpools of starspume silver-thin as hairs of einstein!
  father whitman i celebrate a matter that renders self oblivion!
  grand subject that annihilates inky hands & pages'
  prayers, old orators' inspired immortalities,
  i begin your chant, openmouthed exhaling into spacious
  sky over silent mills at hanford, savannah river,
  rocky flats, pantex, burlington, albuquerque
  i yell thru washington, south carolina, colorado,
  texas, iowa, new mexico,
  where nuclear reactors creat a new thing under the
  sun, where rockwell war-plants fabricate this death
  stuff trigger in nitrogen baths,
  hanger-silas mason assembles the terrified weapon
  secret by ten thousands, & where manzano mountain boasts to store
  its dreadful decay through two hundred forty millenia
  while our galaxy spirals around its nebulous core.
  i enter your secret places with my mind, i speak with
  your presence, i roar your lion roar with mortal mouth.
  one microgram inspired to one lung, ten pounds of
  heavy metal dust adrift slow motion over grey alps
  the breadth of the planet, how long before your radiance
  speeds blight and death to sentient beings?
  enter my body or not i carol my spirit inside you,
  unnaproachable weight,
  o heavy heavy element awakened i vocalize your consciousness to six worlds
  i chant your absolute vanity. yeah monster of anger
  birthed in fear o most
  ignorant matter ever created unnatural to earth! delusion
  of metal empires!
  destroyer of lying scientists! devourer of covetous
  generals, incinerator of armies & melter of wars!
  judgement of judgements, divine wind over vengeful
  nations, molester of presidents, death-scandal of
  capital politics! ah civilizations stupidly industrious!
  canker-hex on multitudes learned or illiterate!
  manufactured spectre of human reason! o solidified
  imago of practitioner in black arts
  i dare your reality, i challenge your very being!
  i publish your cause and effect!
  i turn the wheel of mind on your three hundred tons!
  your name enters mankind's ear!
  i embody your ultimate powers!
  my oratory advances on your vaunted mystery!
  this breath dispels your braggart fears!
  i sing your form at last
  behind your concrete & iron walls inside your fortress
  of rubber & translucent silicon shields in filtered
  cabinets and baths of lathe oil,
  my voice resounds through robot glove boxes & ignot
  cans and echoes in electric vaults inert of atmosphere,
  i enter with spirit out loud into your fuel rod drums
  underground on soundless thrones and beds of lead
  o density! this weightless anthem trumpets transcendent
  through hidden chambers and breaks through
  iron doors into the infernal room!
  over your dreadful vibration this measured harmony
  floats audible, these jubilant tones are honey and
  milk and wine-sweet water
  poured on the stone black floor, these syllables are
  barley groats i scatter on the reactor's core,
  i call your name with hollow vowels, i psalm your fate
  close by, my breath near deathless ever at your side
  to spell your destiny, i set this verse prophetic on your
  mausoleum walls to seal you up eternally with
  diamond truth! o doomed plutonium.
  
  ii
  
  the bar surveys plutonian history from midnight
  lit with mercury vapor streetlamps till in dawn's
  early light
  he contemplates a tranquil politic spaced out between
  nations' thought-forms proliferating bureaucratic
  & horrific arm'd, satanic industries projected sudden
  with five hundred billion dollar strength
  around the world same time this text is set in boulder,
  colorado before front range of rocky mountains
  twelve miles north of rocky flats nuclear facility in
  united states of north america, western hemisphere
  of planet earth six months and fourteen days around
  our solar system in a spiral galaxy
  the local year after dominion of the last god nineteen
  hundred seventy eight
  completed as yellow hazed dawn clouds brighten east,
  denver city white below
  blue sky transparent rising empty deep & spacious to a
  morning star high over the balcony
  above some autos sat with wheels to curb downhill
  from flatiron's jagged pine ridge,
  sunlit mountain meadows sloped to rust-red sandstone
  cliffs above brick townhouse roofs
  as sparrows waked whistling through marine street's
  summer green leafed trees.
  
  iii
  
  this ode to you o poets and orators to come, you
  father whitman as i join your side, you congress
  and american people,
  you present meditators, spiritual friends & teachers,
  you o master of the diamond arts,
  take this wheel of syllables in hand, these vowels and
  consonants to breath's end
  take this inhalation of black poison to your heart, breath
  out this blessing from your breast on our creation
  forests cities oceans deserts rocky flats and mountains
  in the ten directions pacify with exhalation,
  enrich this plutonian ode to explode its empty thunder
  through earthen thought-worlds
  magnetize this howl with heartless compassion, destroy
  this mountain of plutonium with ordinary mind
  and body speech,
  thus empower this mind-guard spirit gone out, gone
  out, gone beyond, gone beyond me, wake space,
  so ah!
  
  allen ginsberg