Away above a Harborful . . .

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti b. 1919 Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Away above a harborful

of caulkless houses

among the charley noble chimneypots

of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines

a woman pastes up sails

upon the wind

hanging out her morning sheets

with wooden pins

O lovely mammal

her nearly naked breasts

throw taut shadows

when she stretches up

to hang at last the last of her

so white washed sins

but it is wetly amorous

and winds itself about her

clinging to her skin

So caught with arms

upraised

she tosses back her head

in voiceless laughter

and in choiceless gesture then

shakes out gold hair

while in the reachless seascape spaces

between the blown white shrouds

stand out the bright steamers

to kingdom come

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Away above a Harborful...” from These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)

Biography

As poet, playwright, publisher, and activist, Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped to spark the San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1950s and the subsequent “Beat” movement. Like the Beats, Ferlinghetti felt strongly that art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals. His career has been marked by its constant challenge of the status quo; his poetry engages readers, defies popular . . .

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