Many Loves

Many Loves

by Allen Ginsberg

Resolved to sing no songs henceforth but those of manly attachment

                                                                        –Walt Whitman

Neal Cassady was my animal: he brought me to my knees

and taught me the love of his cock and the secrets of his mind

And we met and conversed, went walking in the evening by the park

Up to Harlem, recollecting Denver, and Dan Budd, a hero

And we made shift to sack out in Harlem, after a long evening,

Jack and host in a large double bed, I volunteered for the cot, and Neal

Volunteered for the cot with me, we stripped and lay down.

I wore my underwear, my shorts, and he his briefs–

lights out on the narrow bed I turned to my side, with my back to his Irish boy’s torso,

and huddled and balanced on the edge, and kept distance–

and hung my head over and kept my arm over the side, withdrawn

And he seeing my fear stretched out his arm, and put it around my breast

Saying “Draw near me” and gathered me upon him:

I lay there trembling, and felt his great arm like a king’s

And his breasts, his heart slow thudding against my back,

and his middle torso, narrow and made of iron, soft at my back,

his fiery firm belly warming me while I trembled–

His belly of fists and starvation, his belly a thousand girls kissed in Colorado

his belly of rocks thrown over Denver roofs, prowess of jumping and fists, his stomach of solitudes,

His belly burning iron and jails affectionate to my side:

I began to tremble, he pulled me in closer with his arm, and hugged me long and close

my soul melted, secrecy departed, I became

Thenceforth open to his nature as a flower in the shining sun.

And below his belly, in white underwear, tight between my buttocks,

His own loins against me soft, nestling in comradeship, put forth