Allen Ginsberg with Peter Orlovsky in Calcutta

Allen Ginsberg

Heat

Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel
Covered with old grey fur buzzing flies
Eye like mango flowing orange pus
Ears Durga people vomiting in their sleep
Got huge legs a dozen buses move inside Calcutta
Swallowing mouthfuls of dead rats
Mangy dogs bark out of a thousand breasts
Garbage pouring from its ass behind alleys
Always pissing yellow Hoogly water
Bellybutton melted Chinatown brown puddles
Coughing lungs Sound going down the sewer
Nose smell a big grey bidi
Heart bumping & crashing over tramcar tracks
Covered with a hat of cloudy iron
Suffering water buffalo head lowered
To pull the huge Cart of Year uphill.

7/8/62

To Peter

The whitewashed room, roof
of a third-rate Mohammedan hotel,
two beds, blurred fan
whirling over yr brown guitar,
knapsack open on floor, towel
hanging from chair, orange crush,
brown paper manuscript packages,
Tibetan tankas, Gandhi pyjamas,
Ramakrishna Gospel, bright umbrella
a mess on a rickety wooden stand,
the yellow wall-bulb lights up
this scene Calcutta for the thirtieth night - -
Come in the green door, long Western gold
hair plastered down your shoulders
from shower: "Did we take our pills
this week for malaria?" Happy birthday
dear Peter, your 29'th year.