From the posthumous volume, Wait Till I’m Dead
Allen and Ted (Berrigan) go to Oklahoma
to commune with the spirit of Woody Guthrie
Second Spontaneous Collaboration Into The Air, Circa 23 May 1980
(by Ted Berrigan and Allen Ginsberg)
Playing tapes of Woody Guthrie singing “Dust-
Pneumonia Blues”
We drove two hours across sun-baked pleasant hilly
Oklahoma landscape
Chatting about the latest war propaganda news
In a red Ford, rich man’s car & all the gossip we could
scrape
Up from the sandstone ruins of Arlo‘s father’s hillside
house –
Bearing freshly removed gifts, shingle nails, to take
back to New York City friends
We sat awhile, stood awhile, scratched our heads , &
searched out a little mouse
It wasn’t a mouse, it was a man from Wisconsin, who’d
also come to see Woody’s house! Then
I walked by myself down the dirt alley & saw a shack
where no-one lived with a large TV
And when I rose from meditation you led us down the
mockingbird lane & showed that shack to me
An old grey haired woman eating peanuts out of her
hand & putting them into her mouth
Came through the screen-door onto the porch to feed
her cat while we stood looking south
We snapped our photographs in Oklahoma looking
downhill on the plains
There were four of us & now we’re gone & Woody’s
house remains
This poem was published in United Artists magazine, (edited by Lewis Warsh and Bernadette Mayer), in September, later that year.
Tulsa, Oklahoma – home of the Woody Guthrie Center
and now of The Bob Dylan Center
It’s Bob Dylan’s 83rd birthday tomorrow
Stay tuned.