A 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 hip

            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

      nineteen 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

From A Coney Island of the Mind (New Directions, 1958)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, pictured in 1960