Key in the Window - Ginsberg Poem

 

                           

I have seen the key in the window,
separate, gold, shiny,
alien to these dirty institution walls.
Shall I take the key,
shall I escape the four white walls?
Shall I walk upon the roads of rainbow, emerald,
meditating upon Jewry?
Elohim! Elohim! Am I of the lesser light,
mind draped.

in foreign night?
G-d of the desert, I’m drowning in sand here, without nomad salvation.

Baby boys, circumcised, observant orthodoxy.
“Don’t murder me, don’t murder me, don’t murder me.
Let me escape into the sunlight.

Let me know who I am, just once.
I ain’t crazy, I swear!”

I am bound by bars, the key has transformed into shackles.
The man with the Golden Warhole telephone
has arrived in my room,
syringe full of Mescaline, eyes strange with vagrant fire,
saying “It’s time to go, it’s time to go,
it’s time to forget yourself, time to forget it all, don’t worry,
we only mean the best for you.”

And I scrawl upon the Book, repeating only words that I know,
only words that I have been given.
Ben Sirrah, forgive me.  I am confused in these lethargies of time.

Iron bed, no escape.
The key is in the window, sunlight in the window,
illuminating the key
illuminating the Way Out

for those left behind to live.

Key be exalted.  Key be illuminated, like pictures of the Ark of the Covenant
in illuminated medieval manuscripts.  Therein the Presence of Elohim marches
before the Children of Israel.  
Reach out, reach out, nothing.  The family has abandoned me to this strange room.