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POEM FOR GREGORY CORSOS' GRACE AT THE ENGLISH CEMETERY IN ROME

POEM FOR GREGORY CORSOS' GRACE AT THE ENGLISH CEMETERY IN ROME
Gerald Nicosia and Gregory Corso in 1980 (photo: Marc PoKempner)

Poem by: Gerald Nicosia
Translated by: Fadil Bajraj

Dear Gregory as long as I have known you
They threw you from different places
I was watching Bob Levy
Normally a kind man
How to drive you from City Lights almost like you were a clown
Shouting, “We love your books here
But not you!"
(Word had gotten out that you had spent a night there
And you robbed the cash register
Because they forgot to pay the royalties
But you could not prove this
According to me.)
I saw your name in the concrete outside Vesuvius
Which means that even there they banished you forever
After you approached a cute woman and
You told him, with a snarl of scorn
"I'd like to lick your pussy!"
A night at Dante's Bar
(what irony)
When you put on some weight
They again threatened to throw you out
While you told them that if they do such a thing
You would come back with “a pistol…
A Roscoe', and that you're going to tell them the fun
The barman returned with a threat:
"We also have as many pistols as you want"
And you said: "You beast
I'm not talking about a single weapon,
I'm talking about a flurry of wavy lines
That I have in mind!"
Now I heard that they are going to leave
Your grace
From the English Cemetery in Rome
Where I used to sit on your marble tombstone
And I played with the wild cats
They used to come all day to see him
Pay homage to your cat-like grace
They are saying that you are not paying
Your rent receipt
For the cemetery plot
On time
But who is paying the bill?
On Keats and Shelley
That they rest next to you?
Ah, Gregory, I hope so
Those little ones who
They shake the dead
To wake up some night
From the rolling barrage of your mind
And you burn their dreams
Giving them endless nightmares
And make fun of them once and for all
That hall he who constantly
Has died
He would dream
To dig it up
Someone who is still alive
Underground.