Book of Sketches - Jack Kerouac [44]
New York Panorama
The UN Building with
white marble side, little
laddrs of workers strung
up the side — Queensboro
Bridge with archaic
pinpoint boings & big
superstructure with
minute traffic & looking
Chinese in the
sod besoiled soot
stained cleanpale
lateafternoon sky —
the river tide swells
& is somber below
the sad slow parade
of truckforms & car
insects inching to the
Eternity — In Long
Island City antique brewery
red oldbuildings like
Jamestown in 1752,
steeples, wine red ware-
house pier, orange clean
stacks of ships —
1837 written on a huge
grim dirtybrick gallow-
house nameless iron
rack cluttered warehouse
— lost unknown blood
brick factories spewing
smoke — behind them
other smokes of further
dim cement rack
factories pale & vague
as dawn in the pale
worm of the sky —
rosy clouds above — like
off the coast of Manzanillo —
Subway Sensations
Smell of burnt nuts
in the power of the
car & the aromatic
almond dusts of the
tunnel — Growling
whine of the shurry
moveahead car as
it balls from one
station faster light-
flashing to another
till wasting the
brakes crash to
stop & the whine
amid knocks &
wheel bumps lowers, till
the stop, the doors,
the bump, the
restless churry churry
wurd wurd wurd of
the power as it waits
to resume — cars
swaying, vestibule swaying
— The switch
point ta tap too boom
like a song crossing
another track on
bumpy parts of
track — The Mexico
cafeteria tile of
station walls — the
start-up again, the
growing whur of the
power to fly another
black halfmile with
smashing crossings of
posts & dark reelby
of pipes, lights,
concrete curbs, darkness,
Egyptian mummy niches,
— till the station
again,
the “Quick
Relief Tums And
Indigestion” sign
MY MOTHER’S FRENCH CANADIAN SONGS
TI SAUVAGE NOIR
C’est un ti savage noir-e
Noir tous barbouillez wish-té
S’en vas’ t’ a la rivière
C’éta pour se baigner wish-té
Tou-ma-né-got-a-wilta
wilta
Tou-ma-né-gét-a-wilté
wilté
Manégé — wish-té
De la premiere-e plonge
Le savage a chanter wish-té
De la second-eplonge
Le savage c’ai baigner wish-té
Tou-ma-né-got-a-wilta
wilta
Tou-ma-né-gét-a-wilté
wilté
De la second-e plonge —
Le savage s’ai baigner wish-té
De la troixieme plonge
Le savage c’est noyer wish-té
Tou-ma-né-got-a-wilta
wilta
Tou-ma-né-gét-a-wilté
wilté
ÉLANCETTE (sung fast) (Caughnawaga Indian)
Élancette me tonté (Song)
Ma ka hi
Ma ka haw
Baisser
Ma ka hi cawsette
O bé go zo
Ma gou sette-a
BUTTER SONG
Encore un ti coup
Ça raidit toujours
Vire la manivelle
Mamoiselle
Mam-selle-a
Encore un ti coup
Ça raidit toujours
Vire la manivelle
Mamoiselle
Ç’est tous
New York tenement
window sill, they want to
hold nature close to their
lives, they have pathetic
little pots with dead
roots & stems — One
tiny earthen pot sits
in an asparagus can,
its produce is 2 stems
with dry dead leaves
fawdling houseward &
as tho falling in —
Another clay pot
has a completely just
died green that has
shot up & then
down to die on the outside
at the base of the pot
the stem completely bent
& despairing — Two nameless
blackpainted tin cans,
small ones, former frozen
orange juice cans, with
just dry white earth in
em — A larger black
can with nothing in it —
A tiny new-shining clay
pot with a little
fwit hollow stalk
like dead cornstalk
sticking out — Another
clay pot with a
sprig of last Autumn’s
dead leaves torn with
a stem from some
tree it would seem —
One final jar with a
kind of scallion looking
green growth the only
live thing in the sad
window the sill of
which is incredibly
chipped dry slivery
wood painted onetime
sick blue — the
window frame sick
green — The inside
wall bilious yellowish
with stains — the
outside wall of the
building at that point
out in the back alley
a kind of stucco cement
with gaps showing
underneath concretes
— the sill’s outer
extremity is a slab of
rock — Here in the
hot dogday last days
of August the windowsill
hangs in bleary reality
meaningless