His Toy, His Dream, His Rest

by John Berryman

  254

  Mrs Thomas, Mrs Harris, and Mrs Neevel

  were all his students all a summer’s day.

  He couldn’t tell, from the other, one.

  And he did teach them Luther, who undone

  the sacramental system & taught evil

  is ingrained. Why,

  that was a sexy summer, with Mrs Thomas

  sitting under her hair on a chair-form

  & Mrs Harris & Mrs Neevel

  who I may hope for Mr Harris & Mr Neevel

  do giant shrimp in olive oil & lemon

  taking no notes.

  Mrs T, Mrs H & Mrs N

  figured among my kids, busy as all

  get-out, in our shrewd heat.

  Luther went into seclusion, along with Mrs Thomas,

  and once I felt in my flying tackle face a cleat

  when I sailed through the Fifth Form.

  255

  My twin, the nameless one, wild in the woods

  whilst I at Pippin’s court flourish, am knighted:

  we met & fighted

  on a red road, made friends, and all my goods

  now are half his. I pull this out of the past,

  St Valentine’s forecast.

  Trim, the complex lace, whitest on red:

  my baby’s kindergarten had a ball

  save one got none at all

  & tears, like those for the Roman martyr shed

  & the bishop of Terni who suffered the same day,

  so ancient writers say.

  I say, said Henry (all degrees of love

  from sky-blue down to spiriting blood, down to

  the elder from the new,

  loom sanctuaries we are pilgrims of,

  the pierced heart over there seems to be mine)

  this is my Valentine.

  256

  Henry rested, possessed of many pills

  & gin & whiskey. He put up his feet

  & switched on Schubert.

  His tranquillity lasted five minutes

  for (1) all that undone all the heavy weeks

  and (2) images shook him alert.

  A rainy Sunday morning, on vacation

  as well as Fellowship, he could not rest:

  bitterly he shook his head.

  —Mr Bones, the Lord will bring us to a nation

  where everybody only rest. —I confess

  that notion bores me dead,

  for there’s no occupation there, save God,

  if that, and long experience of His works

  has not taught me his love.

  His love must be a very strange thing indeed,

  considering its products. No, I want rest here,

  neither below nor above.

  257

  The thunder & the flaw of their great quarrel

  abased his pen. He could not likely think.

  He took himself out of it,

  both wrong & right, beyond well beyond moral,

  in the groves of meaningless rage, which ache & stink

  unlike old shit

  which loses its power almost in an hour,

  ours burgeons. When I trained my wives, I thought

  now they’ll be professional:

  they became professional, at once wedlocks went sour

  because they couldn’t compete with Henry, who sought

  their realizations. The J.P. coughed.

  Married life is a boat

  forever dubious, with the bilge stale.

  There’s no getting out of that.

  Gongs & lightning crowd my returned throat,

  I always wept at parades: I knew I’d fail:

  Henry wandered back on stage & sat.

  258

  Scarlatti spurts his wit across my brain,

  so too does Figaro: so much for art

  after the centuries yes

  who had for all their pains above all pain

  & who brought to their work a broken heart

  but not as bad as Schubert’s:

  that went beyond the possible: that was like a man

  dragged by his balls, singing aloud ‘Oh yes’

  while to his anguisht glance

  the architecture differs: he’s getting on,

  the tops of buildings change, like a mad dance,

  the Piazza Navona

  recovers its calm after he went through,

  the fountain went on splashing, all was the same

  after his agony,

  abandoned cats had what to say to you,

  lovers performed their glory & its shame:

  Henry put his foot down: free.

  259

  Does then our rivalry extend beyond

  your death? our lovely friendly rivalry

  over a quarter-century?

  One of my students gives me, late, a long paper

  on one of your poems, which I barely can stand

  for excellence & loss?

  When worst it got, you went away I charge you

  and we will wonder over this in Hell

  if the circles communicate.

  I stayed here. It’s changing from blue to blue

  but you would be rapt with the gold hues, well,

  you went like Pier to another fate,

  I never changed. My desire for death was strong

  but never strong enough. I thought: this is my chance,

  I can bear it.

  I’m not a Buddhist. I studied the systems long,

  the High Systems. Come hunt me, ancient friend,

  and tell me I am wrong.

  260

  Tides of dreadful creation rocked lonely Henry

  isolated in the midst of his family

  as solitary as his dog.

  In another world he’ll have more to say of this,—

  concepts came forward & were greeted with a kiss

  in the passionate fog.

  Lucid his project lay, beyond. Can he?

  Loose to the world lay unimaginable Henry,

  loose to the world,

  taut with his vision as it has to be,

  open & closed sings on his mystery

  furled & unfurled.

  Flags lift, strange chords lift to a climax. Henry

  is past. Returning from his travail, he

  can’t think of what to say.

  The house’s all about him, so is his family.

  Tame doors swing upon his mystery

  until another day.

  261

  Restless, as once in love, he put pen to paper—

  a stub point with real ink, he hates ballpoints—

  and on a thick pad, on lap—

  how many thousands times has this been the caper,

  in fear & love, with interest, whom None anoints,

  taking instead the fourth rap—

  habitual—life sentence—will he see it through?

  or will a long vac, at the end of time—

  discharge—greet gravid Henry?

  Many a one his pen’s been bad unto,

  which they deserved, some honoured in his rhyme

  which they deserved, hee hee!

  A stub point: one odd way to Paradise

  ha ha! but of more dignity than my typewriter,

  than my marvellous pencils darker.

  We’re circling, waiting for the tower & the marker

  the radio’s out, some runways are brighter

  as we break Control & come down with our size.

  262

  The tenor of the line of your retreats,

  done in an instant, hurts me forever. Well,

  I suffer that bad will

  so long as I suffer. You would not have wanted this,

  the chaining of your friend to your abyss

  with one of the best seats.

  I overlook the hopeless spectacle

  with pity & love & almost perfect admiration,

  I feel your terror.

  I wish I didn’t. Go, but not to he
ll

  but you have disqualified yourself for this nation

  of attempts & trial-&-error.

  You lowered a wall between us

  which was your privilege. Now you must not expect

  anything but suffering more,

  fearless & final. You became anonymous

  and untruth after in your regard will be correct

  hung on the veil you tore.

  263

  You couldn’t bear to grow old, but we grow old.

  Our differences accumulate. Our skin

  tightens or droops: it alters.

  Take courage, things are not what they have been

  and they will never again. Hot hearts grow cold,

  the rush to the surface falters,

  secretive grows the disappearing soul

  learned & uncertain, young again

  but not in the same way:

  Heraclitus had a wise word here to say,

  which I forget. We wake & blunder on,

  wiser, on the whole,

  but not more accurate. Leave that to the young,

  grope forward, toward where no one else has been

  which is our privilege.

  Besides, you gave up early in our age

  which is your privilege, from Chatterton

  to the bitter & present scene.

  264

  I always wanted to be old, I wanted to say

  ‘O I haven’t read that for fifteen years’

  or ‘my copy of that

  seems in the usual course to have gone astray’

  or ‘She—that woman moved me to young tears,

  even Henry Cat.’

  But now the moment’s mine, I find I love it not.

  Base envy of the very young afflicts me,

  contempt & boredom, but envy.

  I just came on my notes for an old play,

  fifty volumes I read from Widener, thought

  that now would turn me grey

  roiled in my burning brain, Connolly & Pearse

  my hero-martyrs over fifty books

  stampt down in lime:

  their triumph needs a man younger in rhyme,

  reservationless, unfeeling for the worse,

  a young man with three rooks.

  265

  I don’t know one damned butterfly from another

  my ignorance of the stars is formidable,

  also of dogs & ferns

  except that around my house one destroys the other

  When I reckon up my real ignorance, pal,

  I mumble ‘many returns’—

  next time it will be nature & Thoreau

  this time is Baudelaire if one had the skill

  and even those problems O

  At the mysterious urging of the body or Poe

  reeled I with chance, insubordinate & a killer

  O formal & elaborate I choose you

  but I love too the spare, the hit-or-miss,

  the mad, I sometimes can’t always tell them apart

  As we fall apart, will you let me hear?

  That would be good, that would be halfway to bliss

  You said will you answer back? I cross my heart

  & hope to die but not this year.

  266

  Dinch me, dark God, having smoked me out.

  Let Henry’s ails fail, pennies on his eyes

  never to open more,

  the shires are voting him out of time & place,

  they’ll drop his bundle, drunkard & Boy Scout,

  where he was once before:

  nowhere, nowhere. Was then the thing all planned?

  I mention what I do not understand.

  I mention for instance Love:

  God loves his creatures when he treats them so?

  Surely one grand exception here below

  his presidency of

  the widespread galaxies might once be made

  for perishing Henry, whom let not then die.

  He can advance no claim,

  save that he studied thy Word & grew afraid,

  work & fear be the basis for his terrible cry

  not to forget his name.

  267

  Can Louis die? Why, then it’s time to join him

  again, for another round, the lovely man.

  Years roll away,

  and we are back in London, in ’53.

  He was doing the documentary

  of the Everest film.

  (Book V is done. Would Louis have been delighted therewith?)

  He was not of the character of myth,

  & knew nothing about climbing.

  I had to tell him about Leigh-Mallory

  & Leigh-Mallory’s daughter Clare, & Leigh-Mallory’s

  remark: ‘Because it is there.’

  So Henry’s thought rushed onto a thousand screens

  & Louis’, the midwife of it. A thousand dreams behind,

  birds are incredibly stupid.

  My love for Louis transcended his good work,

  and—older than Henry—saw him not in the dark

  & suffocating.

  268

  Henry, absent on parade, hair-triggered, mourned

  on Memorial Day a many of my dead

  and all of the living.

  He finally decided: It’s forgiving.

  We wakes at dawn & we sits up, forlorned,

  besides the panic dread.

  His love passed on to him through one a note,

  which made him ache. Notes in the sullen ground

  are not passed, or found.

  Their solitude is great & dug to last,

  their final memory the scary boat.

  Now let’s have a new sound:

  that of the banners & the bands, and my love,

  in triumphant reckoning: they die, we cheer,

  Hurrah for the lost!

  These thoughts, and of his love, in his mind he tossed

  enough until he nearly died thereof.

  Then came back the fear.

  269

  Acres of spirits every single day

  shook headed Henry toward his friendly grave.

  But after one square mile

  less he shook, more he laboured, with each Wave

  further he vanished, while the great sky grew grey

  never to wake again while

  the visible universe grows older, while

  onflying stars out to my edges sail—

  the edges of what?

  I pause in a welcome distance of applauses

  Henry obeyed sometimes some strange old laws:

  mostly he made his own, cupshot.

  High weird the hymns now in his final days,

  items he sought of what was once called praise

  which now spits & shrieks,

  They say Henry’s love is well beyond Henry

  & advise the poor man back into the tree

  giving up spirits & steaks.

  270

  This fellow keeps on sticking at his drum,

  the only decent german for decades. Some

  would like you to make room,

  mother, and you know where

  whence we were foxed to flower into power

  & bloom, headed thence for the tomb.

  Womb was the word, where Henry never developed.

  Prudent of him, though gloomy. I assume

  that which you neglect.

  The face he put on matters, slightly wrecked,

  passed muster O at noon & while he supped

  & enroute back to the womb.

  There was no time, in the end, to finish her off.

  Halfway he left her, with the right side of her head

  a’ gone,

  with the strength to speak diminishing instead

  but cured forever of that coffin cough

  & the rest of her hair wind-blown.

  271

  Why then did he make, at such cost, crazy sounds?

  to waken ancient
longings, to remind (of childness),

  to make laugh, and to hurt,

  is and was all he ever intended. Short

  came his commands.

  Today, in April, the clouds have personalities. Yes,

  there’s a lamb one; that’s lying down; he waits

  his frightful chances; she hangs over; there’s a dove;

  two are conspiring;

  one flies, wild. These banks and ranks of glowing cloud require

  his passioning attention. Throng the Fates,

  he couldn’t care less, being in love

  with his own teeming lady,—whose dorsal fin

  is keeping her nauseous. Wait till that kid

  comes out, I’ll fix her.

  I’ll burp her till she bleeds, I’ll take an ax

  to her inability to focus, until in

  one weird moment I fall in love with her too.

  272

  The subject was her. He was the object. Clings

  still to these facts affect. If little cats

  come to the parapet

  and hurt my shoulders, growing there like wings

  where most I should go safe: let’s face it, that’s

  the looking to a wet.

  —I’ll see you in the a.m., Dr Bones.

  —Don’t leave now. An eminence of man,

  an imminence of her,

  boils on my brothers’ deaths. Nobody owns

  much, good friend. A parapet with wings,

  an egg lined with fur.

  —I really gotta go. You don’ make sense.

  —I don’t try to. Get with it. When’s said & done

  all that we did & said

  & drank & dreamt, a hundred seasons hence,

  who’ll forgive sunspots & the stains of the son

  where all we crawled & bled?

  273

  Survive—exist—who is at others’ will

  optionless; may gelded be, be put to stud,

  and were sweating sold;

  was sold. —Mr Bones, dat slavey still

  is of our former coast. —When they make me, Bud,

  I show my genitals, cold.

  Saudi Arabia is mah favourite place.

  ’conditioned Cadillacs, like bigoty Texas

  of our own mindless oil.

  Come closer, Sambo. I planting in your face