This long poem was Ginsberg's attempt to mourn his mother, Naomi, but also reflects his sense of loss at his estrangement from his born religion.
In 1972, Robert Kalfin readapted the screenplay for the stage and produced it at the Chelsea Theater Center in the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The play explored Naomi Ginsberg's schizophrenic collapse and made use of innovative video for flashback scenes.
Kalfin's adaptation was also staged in the Habima theater in Israel, translated by Nathan Zach and starring Yoram Khatav as Allen and Gila Almagor as Naomi.
A line from the poem, "No more to say and nothing to weep for", was later used as the title of a 1997 Channel 4 documentary on Ginsberg released shortly after his death.