New Stanzas for Amazing Grace

By Allen Ginsberg 1926–1997 Allen Ginsberg

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place

Where I was lost alone

Folk looked right through me into space

And passed with eyes of stone

O homeless hand on many a street

Accept this change from me

A friendly smile or word is sweet

As fearless charity

Woe workingman who hears the cry

And cannot spare a dime

Nor look into a homeless eye

Afraid to give the time

So rich or poor no gold to talk

A smile on your face

The homeless ones where you may walk

Receive amazing grace

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place

Where I was lost alone

Folk looked right through me into space

And passed with eyes of stone

April 2, 1994

Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amazing

Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s Church

in-the-Bouwerie

Allen Ginsberg. “New Stanzas for Amazing Grace” from Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997, by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1999 by The Allen Ginsberg Trust, and used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997 (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1999)

Biography

One of the most respected Beat writers and acclaimed American poets of his generation, Allen Ginsberg enjoys a prominent place in post-World War II American culture. He was born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Paterson. The son of an English teacher and Russian expatriate, Ginsberg’s early life was marked by his mother’s psychological troubles, including a series of nervous breakdowns. In 1943, while studying . . .

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