Evelyn Nieves, the Washington Post‘s west coast correspondent best known for covering the opposition to the invasion of Iraq, extolls the Beat bookstore on the occasion of its fifthieth birthday. I make a pilgrimmage there every time I travel to San Francisco, as I did last month to find it beneath a fresh coat of paint for the occasion, and lucky enough to have just finished the novel with which I was travelling and being in a book-buying mood (but, then again, I’m usually in a book-buying mood…); ended up with an obscure Iain Sinclair and a Denis Johnson I hadn’t already read.

In honor of the occasion, what say we have a little Michael McClure?

        BABY'S IN BLACK

             Michael McClure



THE NIGHT HYMNS BRIGHT THOUGHTS in Baby's contemplation.

His fists beat and toes clench. His voice

wails terror of the crocodiles

         beneath the bed

         but he's in silence.     Screaming is

         only in his head while moths

         die at the windowsill.  The ice wagon

         loads up and the horse is harnessed

         for the daily trudge through

                North Seattle



                    --like

                    the smell of cinnamon

                    and nutmeg

                it never goes away!



                  I

                am



           this hungry thing



               DESPITE

            the collapse

          of six dimensions,



      lying by the fire and smelling

          granpa's snuff and cedar kindling,

          listening

          to the crackle,



      DON'T TELL ME THIS IS REAL!

Related:<img align=”left” src=”LastGathering.jpg” border=”0″ width=”110″ height=”144″ alt=”[Image ‘LastGathering.jpg’ cannot be displayed]” title=”The Last Gathering of Beat Poets &Artists, City Lights Books

North Beach, San Francisco 1965″>The Last Gathering of Beat Poets & Artists, City Lights Books

North Beach, San Francisco 1965 [scroll down the page for a larger image and identifying caption]: “Lawrence Ferlinghetti wanted to document the 1965 Beat scene in San Francisco in the spirit of the early 20th century classic photographs of the Bohemian artists & writers in Paris…”