III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
          where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
          where we are great writers on the same dreadful
          typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
          where your condition has become serious and
          is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
          where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
          the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
          spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
          harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
          losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
          abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
          is innocent and immortal it should never die
          ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
          where fifty more shocks will never return your
          soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
          cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
          plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
          fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
          where you will split the heavens of Long Island
          and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
          superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
          where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
          rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
          where we hug and kiss the United States under
          our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
          night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
          where we wake up electrified out of the coma
          by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
          nroof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
          hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
          lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
          spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
          here O victory forget your underwear we're
          free
I'm with you in Rockland
          in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
          journey on the highway across America in tears
          to the door of my cottage in the Western night