Read the poem HERE.
“As mammals, what is our most important duty on this third stone from the sun? To preserve inspiration and imagination, and to remember that Diane di Prima said:
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION!”
Michael McClure
Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and is immortalised as “Pat McLear” in Kerouac’s Big Sur.
Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers 
mmmm, really don’t like the easy rhyming ending of that but the rest was good…….the coal, very startling image. I’ve never read him, so thanks.
Having spent more than my fair share of time in Marysville, Kansas, I can only imagine that the move to San Francisco served as epiphany.
thanks for reading Jo
Bob
I imagine it was too