Poem

Americus, Book I (excerpt)
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


I.

To summarize the past by theft and allusion
With a parasong a palimpsest
A manuscreed writ over
A graph of consciousness at best
A consciousness of felt life
A rushing together
Of the raisins of wrath
Of living and dying
The laughter and forgetting
The maze and amaze of life.





From Americus, Book I by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved