Ritual X. : The Evening Pair of Ales

By Paul Blackburn 1926–1971 Paul Blackburn

EAST OF EDEN

is mountains & desert

until you cross the passes into India .

It is 3 o’clock in the afternoon or

twenty of 8 at night, depending

which clock you believe .

AND WEST IS WEST

It’s where the cups and saucers are,

the plates, the knives and forks .

The turkey sandwich comes alone

or with onions if you like

The old newspaperman always takes his hat off

& lays it atop the cigarette machine;

the younger, so-hip journalist, leaves his on

old-style .

The old man sits down in the corner, puts

his hat back on. No challenge, but

it’s visible, the beau geste .

The cigarette

hangs from the side of the younger man’s mouth, he’s

putting himself on .

East of Eden is mountains & desert & every

thing creeps up on you & comes in the night,

unexpectedly .

when one would least put out his hand

to offer, or to defend .

Source: The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn (Persea Books, 1989)

Biography

Paul Blackburn is best known as a Black Mountain Poet because of his role as contributing editor and distributor of the Black Mountain Review: and his subsequent inclusion with the group in Donald Allen’s influential New American Poetry anthology (1960). Although many of Blackburn’s concerns with formal innovation were shared by such faculty members of the experimental Black Mountain College as Robert Creeley and Charles Olson, . . .

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