The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems

by John Berryman

  and in that, that a bare one in 100 is benevolent.

  I wish You would clear this up. Moreover, I know

  it may extend millennia, or ever, till

  you tell somebody to. Meantime: Okay.

  Now hear this programme for my remnant of today.

  Corpuscule-Donor, to the dizzy tune

  of half a hundred thousand while I blink

  losing that horrid same

  scarlet amount and reel intact ahead:

  so of rare Heart repair my fracturing heart

  obedient to disobedience

  minutely, wholesale, that come midnight neither

  my mortal sin nor thought upon it lose me.

  NONES

  Problem. I cannot come among Your saints,

  it’s not in me—‘Velle’ eh?—I will, and fail.

  But I would rather not be lost from You—

  if I could hear of a middle ground, I’d opt:

  a decent if minute salvation, sort of, on some fringe.

  I am afraid, afraid. Brothers, who if

  you are afraid are my brothers—veterans of fear—

  pray with me now in the hour of our living.

  It’s Eleseus’ grave makes the demons tremble,

  I forget under what judge he conquered the world,

  we’re not alone here. Hearing Mark viii, though,

  I’m sure to be ashamed of by. I am ashamed.

  Riotous doubt assailed me on the stair,

  I paused numb. Not much troubled with doubt,

  not used to it. In a twinkling can man be lost?

  Deep then in thought, and thought brought no relief.

  But praying after, and somewhat after prayer

  on no occasion fear had gone away!

  I was alone with You again: ‘the iron did swim.’

  It has been proved to me again & again

  He does not want me to be lost. Who does? The other.

  But ‘a man’s shaliach is as it were himself’:

  I am Your person.

  I have done this & that which I should do,

  and given, and attended, and been still,

  but why I do so I cannot be sure,

  I am suspicious of myself. Help me!

  I am olding & ignorant, and the work is great,

  daylight is long, will ever I be done,

  for the work is not for man, but the Lord God.

  Now I have prepared with all my might for it

  and mine O shrinks a micro-micro-minor

  post-ministry, and of Thine own to Thee I have given,

  and there is none abiding but woe or Heaven,

  teste the pundits. Me I’m grounded for peace.

  Flimsy between cloth, what may I attain

  who slither in my garments? there’s not enough of me,

  Master, for virtue. I’m loose, at a loss.

  Lo, where in this whirlpool sheltered in bone,

  only less whirlpool bone, envisaging,

  a sixtieth of an ounce to every pint,

  sugar to blood, or coma or convulsion,

  I hit a hundred and twenty notes a second

  as many as I may to the glory of confronting—

  unstable man, man torn by blast & gale—

  Your figure, adamantly frontal.

  VESPERS

  Vanity! hog-vanity, ape-lust

  slimed half my blue day, interspersed

  solely almost with conversation feared,

  difficult, dear, leaned forward toward & savoured,

  survivaling between. I have not done well.

  Contempt—if even the man be judged sincere—

  verging on horror, top a proper portion,

  of the poor man in paracme, greeding still.

  That’s nothing, nothing! For his great commands

  have reached me here—to love my enemy

  as I love me—which is quite out of the question!

  and worse still, to love You with my whole mind—

  insufferable & creative addition to Deuteronomy 6—

  Shift! Shift!

  Frantic I cast about abroad

  for avenues of out: Who really this this?

  Can all be lost, then? (But some do these things . .

  I flinch from some horrible saints half the happy mornings—

  so that’s blocked off.) Maybe it’s not God’s voice

  only Christ’s only. (But our Lord is our Lord.

  No vent there.) If more’s demanded of man than can

  ma summon, You’re unjust. Suppose not. See Jewish history,

  tormented & redeemed, millennia later

  in Freud & Einstein forcing us sorry & free,

  Jerusalem Israeli! flames Anne Frank

  a beacon to the Gentiles weltering.

  With so great power bitter, so marvellous mild even mercy?

  It’s not conformable. It must be so,

  but I am lost in it, dire Friend. Only I remember

  of Solomon’s cherubim ‘their faces were inward.’

  And thro’ that veil of blue, & crimson, & linen,

  & blue, You brood across forgiveness and

  the house fills with a cloud, so that the priests

  cannot stand to minister by reason of the cloud.

  COMPLINE

  I would at this late hour as little as may be

  (in-negligent Father) plead. Not that I’m not attending,

  only I kneel here spelled

  under a mystery of one midnight

  un-numbing now toward sorting in & out

  I’ve got to get as little as possible wrong

  O like Josiah then I heard with horror

  instructions ancient as for the prime time

  I am the king’s son who squat down in rags

  declared unfit by wise friends to inherit

  and nothing of me left but skull & feet

  & bloody among their dogs the palms of my hands.

  Adorns my crossbar Your high frenzied Son,

  mute over catcalls. How to conduct myself?

  Does ‘l’affabilité, l’humilité’

  drift hither from the Jesuit wilderness,

  a programme so ambitious? I am ambitious

  but I have always stood content with towers

  & traffic quashing thro’ my canyons wild,

  gunfire & riot fan thro’ new Detroit.

  Lord, long the day done—lapse, & by bootstraps,

  oaths & toads, tranquil microseconds,

  memory engulphing, odor of bacon burning

  again—phantasmagoria prolix—

  a rapture, though, of the Kingdom here here now

  in the heart of a child—not far, nor hard to come by,

  but natural as water falling, cupped

  & lapped & slaking the child’s dusty thirst!

  If He for me as I feel for my daughter,

  being His son, I’ll sweat no more tonight

  but happy snore & drowse. I have got it made,

  and so have all we of contrition, for

  if He loves me He must love everybody

  and Origen was right & Hell is empty

  or will be at apocatastasis.

  Sinners, sin on. We’ll suffer now & later

  but not forever, dear friends & brothers! Moreover:

  my old Black freshman friend’s mild formula

  for the quarter-mile, ‘I run the first 220

  as fast as possible, to get out in front.

  Then I run the second 220 even faster,

  to stay out in front.’ So may I run for You,

  less laggard lately, less deluded man

  of oxblood expectation

  with fiery little resiny aftertastes.

  Heard sapphire flutings. The winter will end. I remember You.

  The sky was red. My pillow’s cold & blanched.

  There are no fair bells in this city. This fireless house

  lies down at Your disposal as usual! Amen!

 
In Memoriam (1914-1953)

  I

  Took my leave (last) five times before the end

  and even past these precautions lost the end.

  Oh, I was highlone in this corridor

  fifteen feet from his bed

  where no other hovered, nurse or staff or friend,

  and only the terrible breathing ever took place,

  but trembling nearer after some small time

  I came on the tent collapsed

  and silence—O unable to say when.

  I stopped panicked a nurse, she a doctor

  in twenty seconds, he pulled the plasticine,

  bent over, and shook his head at me.

  Tubes all over, useless versus coma,

  on the third day his principal physician

  told me to pray he’d die, brain damage such.

  His bare stub feet stuck out.

  II

  So much for the age’s prodigy, born one day

  before I surfaced—when this fact emerged

  Dylan grew stuffy and would puff all up

  rearing his head back and roar

  ‘A little more—more—respect there, Berryman!’

  Ah he had thát,—so far ahead of me,

  I half-adored him for his intricate booms & indecent tales

  almost entirely untrue.

  Scorn bottomless for elders: we were twenty-three

  but Yeats I worshipped: he was amused by this,

  all day the day set for my tea with the Great Man

  he plotted to turn me up drunk.

  Downing me daily at shove-ha’penny

  with English on the thing. C—— would slump there

  plump as a lump for hours, my world how that changed!

  Hard on her widowhood—

  III

  Apart a dozen years, sober in Seattle

  ‘After many a summer’ he intoned

  putting out a fat hand. We shook hands.

  How very shook to see him.

  His talk, one told me, clung latterly to Eden,

  again & again of the Garden & the Garden’s flowers,

  not ever the Creator, only of that creation

  with a radiant will to go there.

  I have sat hard for twenty years on this

  mid potpals’ yapping, and O I sit still still

  though I quit crying that same afternoon

  of the winter of his going.

  Scribbled me once, it’s around somewhere or other,

  word of their ‘Edna Millay cottage’ at Laugharne

  saying come down to and disarm a while

  and down a many few.

  O down a many few, old friend,

  and down a many few.

  Tampa Stomp

  The first signs of the death of the boom came in the summer,

  early, and everything went like snow in the sun.

  Out of their office windows. There was miasma,

  a weight beyond enduring, the city reeked of failure.

  The eerie, faraway scream of a Florida panther,

  gu-roomp of a bull-frog. One broker we knew

  drunk-driving down from Tarpon Springs flew free

  when it spiralled over & was dead without one mark on him.

  The Lord fled that forlorn peninsula

  of fine sunlight and millions of fishes & moccasins

  & Spanish moss & the Cuban bit my father

  bedded & would abandon Mother for.

  Ah, an antiquity, a chatter of ghosts.

  Half the fish now in half the time

  since those blue days died. We’re running out

  of time & fathers, sore, artless about it.

  The Handshake, The Entrance

  ‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley’ and

  ‘You’ve got to cross it by yourself.’

  ‘Ain’t no one gwine cross it for you,

  You’ve got to cross it by yourself.’

  Some say John was a baptist, some say John was a Jew,

  some say John was just a natural man

  addin’ he’s a preacher too?

  ‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley,’

  Friends & lovers, link you and depart.

  This one is strictly for me.

  I shod myself & said goodbye to Sally

  Murmurs of other farewells half broke my heart

  I set out sore indeed.

  The High King failed to blossom on my enterprise.

  Solely the wonderful sun shone down like lead.

  Through the ridges I endured,

  down in no simple valley I opened my eyes,

  with my strong walk down in the vales & dealt with death.

  I increased my stride, cured.

  Henry by Night

  Henry’s nocturnal habits were the terror of his women.

  First it appears he snored, lying on his back.

  Then he thrashed & tossed,

  changing position like a task fleet. Then, inhuman,

  he woke every hour or so—they couldn’t keep track

  of mobile Henry, lost

  at 3 a.m., off for more drugs or a cigarette,

  reading old mail, writing new letters, scribbling

  excessive Songs;

  back then to bed, to the old tune or get set

  for a stercoraceous cough, without quibbling

  death-like. His women’s wrongs

  they hoarded & forgave, mysterious, sweet;

  but you’ll admit it was no way to live

  or even keep alive.

  I won’t mention the dreams I won’t repeat

  sweating & shaking: something’s gotta give:

  up for good at five.

  Henry’s Understanding

  He was reading late, at Richard’s, down in Maine,

  aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,

  my good wife long in bed.

  All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,

  putting the marker in the book, & sleep,

  & wake to a hot breakfast.

  Off the coast was an island, P’tit Manaan,

  the bluff from Richard’s lawn was almost sheer.

  A chill at four o’clock.

  It only takes a few minutes to make a man.

  A concentration upon now & here.

  Suddenly, unlike Bach,

  & horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me

  that one night, instead of warm pajamas,

  I’d take off all my clothes

  & cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff

  into the terrible water & walk forever

  under it out toward the island.

  Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up

  I thought I’d say a thing to please myself

  & why not him, about his talent, to him

  or to some friend who’d maybe pass it on

  because he printed a sweet thing about me

  a long long time ago, & because of gladness

  to see a good guy get out of the advertising racket

  & suddenly make like the Great Chicago Fire—

  yes that was it, fine, fine—(this was a dream

  woke me just now)—I’ll get a pen & paper

  at once & put that down, I thought, and I went

  away from where I was, up left thro’ a garden

  in the direction of the Avenue

  but got caught on a smart kid’s escalator

  going uphill against it, got entangled,

  a girl was right behind me in the dark,

  they hoisted up some cart and we climbed on

  & over the top & down, thinking Jesus

  I’ll break my arse but a parked car broke the fall

  I landed softly there in the dark street

  having forgotten all about the Great Chicago Fire!

  A Usual Prayer

  According to Thy will: That this day only

  I may avoid the vile

  and baritone away in a broader chorus

/>   of to each other decent forbearance & even aid.

  Merely sensational let’s have today,

  lacking mostly thinking,—

  men’s thinking being eighteen-tenths deluded.

  Did I get this figure out of St Isaac of Syria?

  For fun: find me among my self-indulgent artbooks

  a new drawing by Ingres!

  For discipline, two self-denying minus-strokes

  and my wonted isometrics, barbells, & antiphons.

  Lord of happenings, & little things,

  muster me westward fitter to my end—

  which has got to be Your strange end for me—

  and toughen me effective to the tribes en route.

  ‘How Do You Do, Dr Berryman, Sir?’

  Edgy, perhaps. Not on the point of bursting-forth,

  but toward that latitude,—I think? Not ‘shout loud & march straight.

  Each lacks something in some direction. I

  am not entirely at the mercy of.

  The tearing of hair no.

  Pickt up pre-dawn & tortured and detained,

  Mr Tan Mam and many other students

  sit tight but vocal in illegal cells

  and as for Henry Pussycat he’d just as soon be dead

  (on the Promise of—I know it sounds incredible—

  if can he muster penitence enough—

  he can’t though—

  glory

  King David Dances

  Aware to the dry throat of the wide hell in the world

  O trampling empires, and mine one of them,

  and mine one gross desire against His sight

  slaughter devising there,

  some good behind, ambiguous ahead,

  revolted sons, a pierced son, bound to bear,

  mid hypocrites amongst idolaters,

  mockt in abysm by one shallow wife,

  with the ponder both of priesthood & of State

  heavy upon me, yea,

  all the black same I dance my blue head off!

  FROM

  Henry’s Fate & Other Poems, 1967–1972

  (1977)

  Canal smell. City that lies on the sea like a cork

  of stone & gold, manifold throng your ghosts

  of murdered & distraught.

  St Mark’s remains came here covered with pork,

  stolen from Islam. Freedom & power, the Venetian hosts

  cluttered blue seas where they sought

  the wingèd lion on the conquered gates.