An American Spring Is Possible

Kral Majales for President-Nein Nein NATO Fraternal Assistance

America

BY WALT WHITMAN

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,

All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,

Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,

Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,

A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,

Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

Here’s Allen’s account of the whole First of May story, as recounted in 1993  when I interviewed him for a documentary for Czech tv.

“Skvorecky told me he had been nominated by the Polytechnic school to be the candidate for King of May but that he had flu or a cold and he couldn’t do it and he suggested me and, was I interested? – I said, “Well, is it political?” (because I didn’t want to get into any more trouble, as in Cuba) . He said, “No, it’s just a student celebration, they haven’t had it since the Nazis came in. So I said “Ok”, but instead of there being just a small student show of five or ten thousand students, there was a whole town out, a hundred thousand people crowding the streets and it got to be kind of a serious demonstration/manifestation towards the government, you know, protest, protest of some other freedom. And I couldn’t speak Czech, so I chanted Om Shri Maitreya! Om Shri Maitreya!  – Maitreya Buddha, the future Buddha, future Buddha, future Intelligence, future liberation.

So I got elected. And I remembered Vietnam. And I went to a theatre to hear this rock ‘n roll show, and was asked to come on stage. So I climbed over the balcony onto the stage, and, somewhere, someone took my notebook out of my pocket (a little small notebook, where I’d written a poem about Swan Lake,  from the theatre here. And also I’d written, from gossip I’d heard,  (that) (Alexander) Dubček had fallen on his head when he was a baby – and one couplet – “All the Capitalist lies about Communism are true/ And all the Communist lies about Capitalism are true.”

So I wandered around Prague for the next few days, working with people, and writing and talking. And, finally, I was sitting in a restaurant, on the 6^th or so, of May, and a couple of plainclothesmen came and said, Are you Allen Ginsberg?”,  And I said, “Yes”, and they said. “Well, somebody has found your notebook and we’d like to give it back to you if you come to the police station” –  sort of like in Kafka, (very much like a Kafka scene).

And then fed in my room, and then put on a plane to London. So, on the plane to London, I wrote a poem called “Kral Majales”.  And then within another day was in a hotel room with (Bob) Dylan and all four Beatles.  So I went from one odd scene to another. Actually, sort of having a pleasurable time, but, not acting myself, sort of just falling into situations like Schweik, that were very pleasant situations, (actually, even being expelled was sort of interesting).” https://allenginsberg.org/2018/05/may-day-kral-majales/

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