Hersch Silverman


a poem:

This Song is for You

I'm feelin' high and happy
High enough to sing a reefer song
You are my lotus blossom
My sunken treasure
My stratosphere where flamingos fly
I don't know why
But it's only 3 o'clock in the morning and I'm feelin' high and happy
Must be the stuff is here and it's mellow
And it's voodoo hoodoo
That's the way it is
Where there's a jumpin' in a julip joint
A-doin' the head-rag hop
Hey let's boogie
The moon is full
This song is for you
And I don't care what time it is.

from an
interview:

"I read a blurb in Danton Walker’s N.Y. News column in 1958 about Gregory Corso the great American poet starving in Europe, so knowing the address of the Beat Hotel I sent some bucks a couple or three times and a friend of mine in Bayonne, a trombonist, playing the Paris and Brussels World Fair, stopped in to see Allen and Gregory and gave them bucks from me. My friend said they were okay but eating poorly. I have a letter that Gregory wrote:

Dear Hersch thanks for your Hermes rainbow gift had a choice to pay part of rent or buy lots of food or go to a Champs Elysee movie
or buy some pot but wondered awhile about your kindness
and decided to give half to rent and half the rest to Allen
and with my part I bought a big cake and lots of cherries
and two bottles of Vitel and with the final 500 francs I bought some pot and got myself Allen Bill and BJ high and in the middle of our high we all mentioned our love for a man in New Jersey who runs a candy store and we decided that you were our neo-wizard flowing with goodies always with a smile always protecting the good in life. Allen sends his love. I send my love. And if ever I get back to America India hovers over me like a necessary light we shall met and you shall show me Bayonne exchange poems and perhaps in due time I can interest you to join me to find Neptune’s golden statue ten feet high that the Trojans had and worshipped until Ulysses came and took it away and drowned it somewhere in the Aegean.
love
gregory"