Diane di Prima - Spring and Autumn Annals: A Celebration of the Seasons for Freddie

Memorial to Freddie Herko, by George Herms

Freddie Poems, by Diane di Prima, published by Eidolon Editions, 1974
(Cover and photo of Freddie Herko by George Herms)

Let us now call up the slow pace of those evenings. Fall. The Fall of the Year. The Fall of Mankind. Out of what energy, what anger, what high windows now? The persistent voice at the door DiPrima, open the door. Hey, dipreeee!!! And the cold hallway, unfolding the double doors, letting in Freddie and who? Whoever trailed with him thru the frostmarked airs. The letting in Freddie, and the hundred cups of coffee. The voice of complaint: I have another cold. I have another cough. My toe wont point. My back. My hair too long, too short. The Alan shaving. The Mini just to her feet, the Alex not yet turning over. The slow grey of the sky, wind over rooftops. The magic & evil fumes of our large gas heater. Huddled over it, one spot on my ass always burning. Finally tearing the cloth on my old blue jeans. The hundred thousand coffees in that stainless steel pot. Of which glass top now broken. One of the last things Freddie made, holes in that top. Hard now to replace it, glittering reproach. The Winter soups full of garlic. Sometimes a fire. The silence stiffens now in our high white halls. This fall had been filled with bongo drums and castanets. As the summer had been. I think now with something like remorse of a dirty grey platform, some kind of dolly, loading platform dragged from construction site, dragged into that same hall, that now freezing silence, and left by that mad fey creature. How angry I was! How I dragged it out again, cursing, saying I had just gotten the hallway clear. It sat in front of the house for a day or two. The creature returned, looked sad, and wanted to take it in again. He said he wanted to put it on the roof. He wanted to sit on it when he played his drums. And we said no, most vehemently, how we were clearing the roof, had cleared the hall. We cleared the hail all right. We cleared the roof, too.

What I really cant take are the mornings without the sun. To rise in the bleak wind, as if we were rising on the edge of the North Sea. Iron in the sky and in my chest. Iron in the coffee. Taste of gnashing teeth. The clouds not even signaling to each other. Strong wind, and the tree not stirring, layer on layer of me meeting silence on silence. Creak of the washing machine, noises of Alex. Stands in for one Freddie hundreds of Bowery people. Visions of Kirby float over Ninth Avenue. So much won clear. But to have no sun, no yellow light at all. Only the greys, greyblues, at most the white, the underside of pigeons. Or the white ruff of the cat.

The grey velveteen lives again on the top of our trunk. Our trunk of theatre cloths, in the living room. Whence it had been snatched by Freddie, carried off. To be bartered for amphetamine or cocaine. Here in what he called the navel of the earth. Hub o the universe, the lower east side. One more love he wanted, he told me, before he died. Told me it was Billy Gray, poor foolish Billy. Dragged to the roof a sofa, made a tent, the gypsy king, for loving Billy in. Who floated in, and floated out again. Hardly aware what hopes were pinned on him. Never aware at all.

Oh, Freddie, this is the first thing I could weep for. That your third love didnt come to you on Ridge Street. Didnt come, so far as we know, but do we know? Did no third love come to you, no trundling burst? Did the sugar cubes bring you at last no such secrets? Did you finally find all things reaching out and loving you, and you, did you not settle into this love, at peace, nestling, as Jeanne says in the arms of Kali? So that Billy and his secrets floated off painlessly, out of reach, so that Arione, Debbie, Kirby, George, the panorama of your three-ring circus, slipped further than arms-length from you, supporting and singing. I pray now that your third love came, in silver shoes, and veiled, that she glittered and danced for you, a boy-girl, a child with the secrets. That you followed her out the window.

And then the leaves fell. None would fall before. They all came down, they filled up Washington Square. They crunch in Tompkins Square under all our feet. When we dare to walk there, without you, at your side. Debbie in tears because she is still a novice. The old men sunning, and the children skating. Well, they will tear it up, thank god, and one more echo / will spread like ripples / out of reach at last.

So hard to sing hymns of joy in this iron air. And yet we know the age of gold returns. That you have bought it back for us. The king. Another gypsy king, thats all. Bartering blood for gold, to kill this grey. Blanketing. Crpuscule du matin. Crpuscule de laprs-midi. Interlocking shadows. The alchemy that turned this black to gold.

Fall to me used to mean new notebooks, crisp, unused erasers, box upon box of pencils. Bottles of ink. Plans, things to study, schedules for the evenings. Chrysanthemums, a flower Id always hated. Ive finally learned to love them. Will I learn to love trees now too? Taking on characteristics not my own. After a while, fall came to mean winter was coming. That was later, when clothes werent warm enough, or there werent enough of them to keep out wind. The ballet slippers letting in the snow. Walking on subway grates where the warm winds blow. winter on winter coming, all too long. All making colds, and fevers, and numb hands. That hurt when you got to a house, or to a bar. This kind of fall stood for apartment hunting, or going home if there was already a home. The digging in, books, wood, food, all kinds of work. Provisioning the house for the time ahead.

I remember the fall you came to live on Amsterdam Avenue. The long tunnel of a house we had acquired. Your slow process of leaving music, for the dance. Long process of leaving Ossining, for the city. Ambitious unrealized theatre, a piece called The Project; a magazine, still undone, then titled Riff. Longleys, where coffee after the first cup was free. The Whitney Museum, with its small dumpy reading room. Green rug, soft chairs, HOW WARM IT WAS. How warm the library, across the street. Though the glass windows looking at the street made it not half so snug. The holy air in the Brancusi room, where I would go to pray. How often we met there. Later, but that was spring, we were betrothed there. All the lovely, luxurious bathrooms of those places. Warm they were, and clean, with toilet paper. Hot water to wash our hands. Our few, brave baths, at home. The slow tub in the kitchen, long hours spent filling it up. The green & greasy yellow of kitchen walls. The rickety stove, an early twenties model, with high oven heating the room. Beans always on it, or lentils, bag after bag of garbage. Which we had been instructed to throw thru the window. Into the house next door. Whatsa matter the super would say, you dont have a window? You put it in pails, then I gotta put the pails out. House next door had been empty for twenty-eight years. The bar on the ground floor still going. All kinds of people & rats still living upstairs.