The Acts of Youth

By John Wieners 1934–2002 John Wieners

And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night

What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs

to dull the senses, what little I have left,

what more can be taken away?

The fear of travelling, of the future without hope

or buoy. I must get away from this place and see

that there is no fear without me: that it is within

unless it be some sudden act or calamity

to land me in the hospital, a total wreck, without

memory again; or worse still, behind bars. If

I could just get out of the country. Some place

where one can eat the lotus in peace.

For in this country it is terror, poverty awaits; or

am I a marked man, my life to be a lesson

or experience to those young who would trod

the same path, without God

unless he be one of justice, to wreak vengeance

on the acts committed while young under un-

due influence or circumstance. Oh I have

always seen my life as drama, patterned

after those who met with disaster or doom.

Is my mind being taken away me.

I have been over the abyss before. What

is that ringing in my ears that tells me

all is nigh, is naught but the roaring of the winter wind.

Woe to those homeless who are out on this night.

Woe to those crimes committed from which we

can walk away unharmed.

So I turn on the light

And smoke rings rise in the air.

Do not think of the future; there is none.

But the formula all great art is made of.

Pain and suffering. Give me the strength

to bear it, to enter those places where the

great animals are caged. And we can live

at peace by their side. A bride to the burden

that no god imposes but knows we have the means

to sustain its force unto the end of our days.

For that is what we are made for; for that

we are created. Until the dark hours are done.

And we rise again in the dawn.

Infinite particles of the divine sun, now

worshipped in the pitches of the night.

Source: Selected Poems, 1958-1984 (1986)

Biography

Born in Boston, poet John Wieners received a BA from Boston College and studied at Black Mountain College with Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. He later followed Olson, his mentor, to SUNY Buffalo. A Beat poet and member of the San Francisco Renaissance, Wieners was also an antiwar and gay rights activist. His poetry combines candid accounts of sexual and drug-related experimentation with jazz-influenced . . .

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