I remember sitting on the window bench at Caffe Trieste 15 years ago, and smiling to myself because Ferlinghetti and his friends were chatting over coffee at the round table across from me and it was all so beautifully surreal.
The world was certainly a more beautiful place when Lawrence Ferlinghetti and all the Beat poets were it it. It's not quite as beautiful at the moment, but at least we have their poems! Thank you, Poetic Outlaws, for this one!
Before the smiling mortician and our hopeful heirs comes great industries whose very survival depends on us living as long and painfully as possible :-)
I came across this 30 years ago in high school, and it touched me so much that I copied it onto a piece of lined paper which I have saved to this day.. but I've never come across the poem again until now. I love that this showed up in my Substack today! 🙌
The perfect poetic commentary for how I feel on this particular day on this particular planet in this particular body.
Same here
May I add in that particular time too? 🙂
Absolutely.
I remember sitting on the window bench at Caffe Trieste 15 years ago, and smiling to myself because Ferlinghetti and his friends were chatting over coffee at the round table across from me and it was all so beautifully surreal.
How magical.
The world was certainly a more beautiful place when Lawrence Ferlinghetti and all the Beat poets were it it. It's not quite as beautiful at the moment, but at least we have their poems! Thank you, Poetic Outlaws, for this one!
Love this. I think it was Yeats who said it more gravely (pun intended) - “In the midst of life we are in death.” Or is it the reverse?
Their world was even grayer than ours is now. Horoshima was still smoldering. But 20-20 hindsight always makes the past look rosier.
This so reminds me of the importance of accepting "what is" if we truly wish to see the world as a beautiful place.
Encapsulates the paradox of living perfectly
loved the goosing stars and smiling mortician.
I really enjoyed this captured the bittersweet reality of life itself so well
Hee Haw
Before the smiling mortician and our hopeful heirs comes great industries whose very survival depends on us living as long and painfully as possible :-)
Ferlinghetti's spaghetti
of wordplay.
Thank you for sharing this powerful message
I choked up reading this out loud. I’d love to have heard him read this live.
You, me, each of us
I know the room in heaven he is talking about but there is one room that will play the music, all the time
The gratitude room, plan on being a frequent flyer and being in a place with no more waiting for that mortician 🚀
As true to life now as it was when it was written.
Really fantastic! Love the wit of the final line in particular.
I came across this 30 years ago in high school, and it touched me so much that I copied it onto a piece of lined paper which I have saved to this day.. but I've never come across the poem again until now. I love that this showed up in my Substack today! 🙌