Speaking of icons, there are few things I like better in this rock life than to see the second coming of a true legend. Many have tried and failed: recent efforts from Aerosmith and Jane’s Addiction are ample proof, if you needed any. But to see honest-to-goodness shaman Patti Smith swaggering about the stage, completely lost in a sonic trance, knocking over mike stands, recklessly swinging her raggedy mane, making every roadie’s life hell -- as she did during her recent CBGB’s shows and on TV’s “Sessions at West 54th” -- is for me a lot like witnessing a resurrection. Patti Smith is rock’n’roll’s Lazarus. Her resurgence means my faith in punk as therapy has been restored.

Of course, today’s public Patti Smith is a milder, more grown-up figure than the poetry-spouting, anarchy-preaching banshee of the 1970s. Her hair is streaked with ash-grey, her comments are passionate yet measured, and she’s got something of the earth-mother about her too, as she inserts her two kids, Jesse and Jackson, into every conversation possible. Yet she’s still as string-bean thin and piercingly intense as the Thin White Duchess who glared out from the cover of Horses. And sometimes I get the feeling Smith’s a little surprised to still be on the planet, given the traumas of her time spent away from the celebrity spotlight.

Yet here she is sitting in front of me. I’m in the midst of a bunch of Smith acolytes, who hang on every word as their deity reminisces about the halcyon days at punk ground zero, CBGBs. (Where she was in the midst of a four-night stand.) “There just wasn’t a place back in the early ’70s for an experimental-type band, beyond suburban garages,” she recalls. CBGBs as avant-rock mecca “was really the efforts of the guys from Television: I believe they even built the stage. It was great. We were so grateful, a place where we could do whatever we wanted, unconditionally. It hasn’t changed -- it smells the same, sounds the same. As a venue, it’s sure not built for comfort, but something surprising, unexpected always happened -- and still happens -- there.”

Such as dragging Deadhead Robert Hunter out of the darkened woodwork and on-stage, as she did during her recent residency. Although Smith didn’t know Dead kingpin Jerry Garcia (hey, she’s got enough deceased cronies as it is), her band once opened for them, and they definitely shared a tribal spirit. “They were all about tribalism,” Smith remembers. “Whether you were down or you were tripping or whatever, they were all about uniting people, which is something I’ve always strived for.”

This tribal vibe marches on in Smith’s new CD, Peace and Noise, especially in pieces such as the lead-off track, “Waiting Underground,” which she co-wrote with stringman Oliver Ray. According to Smith, “Simply put, it’s a song of hope, it’s about being alive, being on earth, being connected.”

Yet there are more ghosts hanging around Peace and Noise than in the house from Amityville Horror. In almost a decade that has elapsed between her stepping out of the spotlight (post Dream of Life) and returning with 1996’s quietly smoldering Gone Again, Smith lost -- in no special order -- a brother, a husband (Fred “Sonic” Smith, MC5 powerhouse), musical sidekick Richard Sohl (pianist from the original Patti Smith Band), as well as like-minded artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

More recently, you can add William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to the death list. Yet Smith’s seventh album manages to balance elegy and energy: she even resurrects Ginsberg briefly, borrowing some of his beat raps and footnotes to “Howl” to cast her very own “Spell.” And throughout Peace and Noise there’s the type of explosive rocking fury her late husband reveled in. When her dueling guitarists, long-time aide-de-camp Lenny Kaye and the newish Oliver Ray, cut loose on the sprawling studio jam of “Memento Mori,” the effect is like a sonic crash-and-burn.

Punk’s original poetress has obviously chosen not to go gently into that good night. She even stares death down during “Last Call,” Smith and Ray’s final thoughts on the horror of Heaven’s Gate. The song is a stark sing-and-strum where Patti Smith wannabe Michael Stipe dutifully harmonizes. And then there’s “1959,” where Smith documents a world in turmoil, a not-so-happy days.

“I was a kid growing up at the time,” Smith confesses, “I remember it well. In America there were great things going on: Kerouac’s On the Road, William Burroughs and Jackson Pollock -- and there was the Chevy Impala, this amazing thing with huuuuuge fins and all,” she exclaims, with the breathless excitement of someone about 40 years her junior. “And yet it was the same year China invaded Tibet. Looking back, I wondered how it was that we could survive World War II yet do nothing about helping Tibet.” (This nation in peril still weighs heavily on Smith’s conscience: her “About A Boy” is a standout on the new Concert for Tibet album-film-T-shirt package.)

Yet above and beyond concerns political and artistic, Patti Smith is a hopeful soul -- a mighty surprise given the procession of death she’s watched roll by over the past few years. “I still believe strongly in yelling out when something’s wrong,” she states precisely. “There are many problems today: we Americans are selling our soul to China for business, our spiritual Tao is really in the red. But I think you should weigh it up against the things you should be grateful for -- your kids, New York’s skyline, being able to communicate with people. And also take heart in the fact that a single human being -- be it me, you or Nelson Mandela -- really can change things. That’s very positive.”

As the lady herself once said, maybe people really do have the power, after all.