Birthday present

My mother sent me a couple of poetry books for my Birthday. I finally started reading the first of them: Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This is the first poem in the book. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to the rest. Unfortunately, I'm not able to recreate the layout of the poem on this platform. You will simply have to make due with the words themselves...


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 streamers

to kingdom come