New Stanzas for Amazing Grace by Allen Ginsberg I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place Where I was lost alone Folk looked right through me into space And passed with eyes of stone O homeless hand on many a street Accept this change from me A friendly smile or word is sweet As fearless charity Woe workingman who hears the cry And cannot spare a dime Nor look into a homeless eye Afraid to give the time So rich or poor no gold to talk A smile on your face The homeless ones where you may walk Receive amazing grace I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place Where I was lost alone Folk looked right through me into space And passed with eyes of stone April 2, 1994 Composed at the request of Ed Sanders for his production of The New Amazing Grace, performed November 20, 1994, at the Poetry Project in St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bouwerie
First published in Death & Fame: Last Poems 1993-1997 (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1999).
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Ginsberg’s poem feels like a quiet reminder of how easily we stop seeing people. That dream of being invisible, of others passing with “eyes of stone”, carries a kind of loneliness that most of us recognise, even if we rarely admit it. What struck me most was the gentleness in his idea of charity: not money, not grand gestures, but simply the courage to look at someone and acknowledge their presence.
There’s something painfully honest in the working man who can’t spare a dime but is even more afraid to spare a moment. The poem doesn’t judge him; it just shows how fear and discomfort shape the way we move through the world. And then, almost quietly, Ginsberg offers a small truth — that a smile, a word, a moment of attention can be its own form of grace.
Reading it, I found myself thinking about the faces I pass every day, the ones I pretend not to see. The poem doesn’t preach; it nudges. It reminds you that kindness can be simple, and that sometimes the smallest gesture is the one that matters most.