We salute Harold Norse on what would have been the great poet’s 97th birthday, a day shared with visionary painter Frida Kahlo and visionary being the Dali Lama.
Harold lives as long as his poetry is read and his voice remembered. To that end, here’s a poem from Harold’s time in Tangier, breaking through to a new voice, a new man, recalling the visions and ecstasies shared with his young lover.
To Mohammed On Our Journeys
I was the tourist
el simpatico
and your brother offered you
and also himself
I forgot about your brother
and we took a flat in the Marshan
with reed mats and one water tap
about a foot from the floor
and we smoke hasheesh
and ate well and loved well
and left for the south
Essaouira, Fez, Marrakech
and got to Taroudant
thru the mountains
and bought alabaster kif bowls
for a few dirhams and watched
the dancing boys in desert cafés
kissing old Arabs and sitting on their
laps, dancing with kohl eyes
and heard the music down in Jejouka
in the hills under the stars
the ancient ceremony, Pan pipes
fierce in white moonlight
by white walls
with hooded figures
stoned on kif
for eight nights
and the goatboy in a floppy hat
scared us, beating the air
with a stick, beating whomever came close,
Father of Skins, goat god,
and the flutes maddened us
and we slept together in huts.
San Francisco 7.xi.72
Todd, thank you for reminding us of the legacy of this remarkable person and poet! Keep his work alive!
Love the poem. Am glad to have been a friend of Harold Norse, who wrote a foreword for my book, “This Land Is Not My Land.”