His Toy, His Dream, His Rest

by John Berryman

  he went down chimneys under the Irish skies

  & the last voice in drawled; ‘Henry? a brick,’

  293

  What gall had he in him, so to begin Book VII

  or to design, out of its hotspur materials,

  its ultimate structure

  whereon will critics browse at large, at Heaven Eleven

  finding it was not cliffhangers or old serials

  but according to his nature

  O the baby has had one million & thirteen falls,

  no wonder she howls

  She’ll trip on the steps at Vassar, ho, & bawl

  in Latin. That baby has got to learn things

  including remaining erect & on deck & all,

  her study of herself must include no wings.

  She’s sturdy, beautiful, & she will do, unless

  the universal homage turns her head

  as it well might do mine,

  hypmotized by the Little Baby, who has ears only for Diana & The Beast,

  & mommy, & admirers & her Mir, instead

  of brothers & sisters coming on like swine.

  294

  I broke a mirror, in which I figured you.

  Henry did not lavish his hopes: he hoped to destroy

  with this one act

  the counter-forces against your art’s design,

  the burgeon of your heart. You have enemies,

  my dear. It is a fact

  that you have enemies: one word of praise

  has grouped against you gangs against that word

  of decent praise:

  I urge you, with misgivings, on, these days,

  the temperature of the end has not been taken,

  so I have heard,

  I trust your detestation of Carlyle

  the evil way a genius can go.

  I hope you hate Carlyle

  & Emerson’s insufferable essays,

  wisdom in every line, while his wife cried upstairs,

  disgusting Emerson & Rilke.

  295

  You dear you, clearing up Henry’s foreign affairs,

  with your sword & armour heading for his bank,

  a cable gone astray:

  except for you he had hopped in the Liffey & sank.

  Now what can he in return do: upstairs? downstairs?

  You run your life every day

  so well it’s hard to think of anything you need

  and I only supply needs, needs & ceremonies,

  I’ll send you the last thirteen,

  in all of which Henry is extremely dead

  but talkative. To you with your peat moss & leaf-mould

  & little soft wet holes

  where you put ginger, bloodroot & blueheads

  & pearly everlasting,—what can he say of worth?

  In all his nine lives

  he was seldom so pleased been to be on the same earth

  with you, my dear. We get on better than

  most husbands & wives.

  296

  Of grace & fear, said Lady Valerie,

  you are the master, Henry Pussy-cat.

  After that a lovely silence,

  the Lady sat there, away in Illinois,

  Henry sat here, in Dublin’s fair city,

  close to Killarney Bay.

  O that bay is excellent, the Atlantic is blue

  and soon we’ll take a plane across it to London,

  Paris & Rome & Athens

  & then, if all goes well, Jerusalem

  where all those fine Jews are, & holy places

  imperfectly determined.

  O the sea is blue, & you are my honey dear,

  purred Henry far away, in crisis. Fear

  & grace, she suddenly said.

  A sweet thing to say. Henry was a needer

  of a very few or even of one reader

  in the bright afternoon outspread.

  297

  Golden his mail came at his journey’s end,

  Henry was back in action. His old friend liked

  his ancient sonnets,

  and institutions had come up to scratch

  awarding Henry much: now he was on his own,

  no lectures, no seminars,

  only the actual: I perfect my metres

  until no mosquito can get through,

  I love the Liffey,

  ruined castles (three) make my blood flow

  & that is what my doctor would contra-indicate

  in my case.

  Is there more to say? Surely I’ve said enough,

  my mind has been laid open

  for thirty years, as when I spoke of love

  & either could not get it or had too much of it,

  impenetrable Henry, goatish, reserved,

  whose heart is broken.

  298

  Henry in transition, transient Henry,

  rubbed his eyes & hurt. He was on TV

  with his baby daughter,

  and Housman’s rhyme O in this case was ’oughter

  and Henry did his bloody level best

  for all them young Englishmen & so did his daughter.

  The baby on a million screens, hurrah,

  my almost perfect child, in the midst of the cameramen

  & Daddy’s high-lit reading.

  She never made a peep to that sensitive mike

  my born performer. We’ll see her through Smith & then

  swiftly into the Senate.

  Daddy by then will be the nearest ghost,

  honey, but won’t return. Daddy’s heart sank

  at leaving the lovely baby.

  Your Mommy will be with you, when Henry’s a blank,

  you’ll have to study him in school, at most,

  troubled & gone Henry.

  299

  The Irish have the thickest ankles in the world

  & the best complexions. Unnerved by both,

  Henry reserved his vote.

  A dreadful dream, me stranded on a red rock slope

  unable to go up, or down, or sideways:

  shout for the Fire Department?

  Your first day in Dublin is always your worst.

  I just found my fly open: panic! A depressing

  & badly written letter, very long,

  from northern California enclosing a bad poem.

  Fear of proving unworthy to my self-imposed task.

  Fear.

  And how will his last day in Dublin be,

  away so many labours? —Offer up prayers,

  Mr Bones. Down on your knees.

  Life comes against not all at once but in layers.

  —You offers me this hope. Now I thank you,

  depressed, down on my knees.

  300

  Henry Comforted

  Your first day in Dublin is always your worst

  & today is better, as when thirty years ago

  I recovered my spirits at once.

  Unshaven, tieless, with the most expensive drink in the room,

  I have recovered a little. The room is filling

  with Irish types—one gorgeous girl,

  pipe-men, cigarette-men, a portentous black beard,

  & the accents are flying: the all-service man

  is a giant with a shock of red hair & an easy air.

  Henry is feeling better,

  owing to three gin-&-vermouths.

  He is seeking where to live & pursue his work.

  The Irish are not neat, except in the Book of Kells.

  The skirts are as short here as in Minnesota.

  What the services need

  is a teen-age H-bomb: fashions their elders can follow.

  His shoes are momumental, Egyptian, ay

  the two at my left are giving it verbal hell.

  301

  Shifted his mind & was once more full of the great Dean

  with his oddities about money & his enigmatic ladies,

  the giant presences

  chained to St Patrick’s,
tumultuous, serene,

  their mighty stint done, larger in stone than life,

  larger than Henry’s belief

  who now returns at fifty, conflict-scarred,

  to see how they are doing: why, they are doing

  just what thirty years ago

  he thought they were doing, and it is not hard,

  neither in doubt or trouble, neither gaining nor losing,

  just being the same O.

  His frantic huge mind left him long before the end,

  he wandered mad through the apartments but once was seen

  to pause by a shelf & look

  at a copy of the Tale of a Tub: he took it down

  & was heard to mutter ‘What a genius was mine

  when I wrote down that book.’

  302

  Cold & golden lay the high heroine

  in a wilderness of bears. The forest tramped.

  Henry was not at ease.

  Intrusions had certainly been made on his dignities,

  to his fury. Looking around, he felt cramped.

  He said: This place is theirs,

  I’ll remove elsewhere, I will not live here

  among my thugs. Lo, and he went away

  to Dublin’s fair city.

  There he met at once two ladies dear

  with problems, problems. Henry could not say

  like their parish priest ‘Pray’.

  He immersed himself in their disabled fates

  the catafalque above all for instance T—’s

  and others’ bound to come

  The White House invitation came today,

  three weeks after the reception, hey,

  Henry not being at home.

  303

  Three in Heaven I Hope

  ‘Three in heaven I hope’ said old Jane to Henry

  ‘and one in a mental hospital and three wed.’

  Henry had only three.

  Jack’s lounge roared around them they chatted over their kids,

  Ten-thirty. Work’s over, except Henry’s: more.

  The Irish clouds outside giving us an Irish downpour.

  The baby in her high & hurried voice

  babbles while Henry rocks & rocks; aged four.

  I do love that baby.

  Of babies I have loved I declare I rejoice

  chiefly in Paul & Martha, called Twissy-Pits,

  and jack-knifed how on the floor she sits

  doing her colouring & her scissoring.

  Brought Jerry with me home last night, Kate got cross,

  Jerry likes my baby too.

  Working & children & pals are the point of the thing,

  for the grand sea awaits us, which will then us toss

  & endlessly us undo.

  304

  Maris & Valerie held his grand esteem

  except for maybe Ellen on her hill-top

  in northern California:

  Maris the vividest writer yet, a team

  not a woman, bringing bank mysteries to a stop,

  relishing garden mysteries,

  with the enigma of Boyd ever at her elbow

  as Ellen has the enigma of Phil, while Valerie

  has only & always her own

  in her daring & placid beauty, which bestow

  warily, my dear, warily, warily,

  lest they want that alone.

  I wrote to the White House yesterday, regretting

  the lateness of an invitation there,

  we couldn’t accept:

  I should have consulted him on my splendid getting

  four ladies to write to Henry: who is most fair,

  ingenious & adept?

  305

  Like the sunburst up the white breast of a black-footed penguin

  amid infinite quantities of gin

  Henry perceived his subject.

  It came nearer, like a guilty bystander,

  stood close, leaving no room to ponder,

  Mickey Mouse & The Tiger on the table.

  Leaving the ends aft open, touch the means,

  whereby we ripen. Touch by all means the means

  whereby we come to life,

  enduring the manner for the matter, ay

  I sing quickly, offered Henry, I

  sing more quickly.

  I sing with infinite slowness finite pain

  I have reached into the corner of my brain

  to have it out.

  I sat by fires when I was young, & now

  I’m not I sit by fires again, although

  I do it more slowly.

  306

  The Danish priest has horns of solid fire

  the angry little lady is for hire

  Henry remembers it all

  the steep-down street which also cost his ankle

  His housemother Miss Dulon without a wrinkle

  the long sweet days of Fall

  the long sweet days of youths striving together

  Friends so intense the world seems to hold no other

  Henry remembers all

  A night with a drunk B-girl & a drunk pawnbroker

  They threw him out in the end, a half-drunk joker

  whereas they went in her room on business

  The green green fields between Cobh (Khōve) & Dublin

  White horses grazing, most splendid since Kentucky

  Henry remembers fire

  Irish tenors impromptu in the Lounge

  Thirty years of mostly labour & scrounge

  The fire out of hand, the embers

  307

  The Irish monk with horns of solid mire

  pillaged the countryside: Haw haw they cried

  this is our favourite monk

  He did them down dirty like a low-down skunk

  The Irish sky remained fitful & wide

  with clouds bright as fire

  Helen or Henry is reborn in this place of the past

  The Eighteenth Century lives on & on

  Henry is overcome

  with this solidity where shall he find a home?

  The Irish converse about practical questions

  & about finding us a house fast.

  Cold & weary sought he a hearth, not just for now

  but all the workful months to come, Adrienne

  Succor me, be on my side

  This is the chief lion-breeding place: I bow

  gently to my superiors, being merely men

  who have not been denied.

  308

  An Instructions to Critics

  The women of Kilkenny weep when the team loses,

  they don’t see the match but they cry. Mad bettors everywhere,

  the sign “Turf Accountant”,

  men slipping in & out. People are all the same,

  the seaman argued: Henry feels the Spanish & Irish

  & Bengalis are thoroughly odd.

  Americans, whom I prefer, are hopelessly normal.

  The Japanese are barely comprehensible & formal,

  formal Henry found.

  We should have lowered the boom

  on ourselves in our mother’s womb,

  dixit Henry’s pal above ground.

  My baby chatters. I feel the end is near

  & strong of my large work, which will appear,

  and baffle everybody.

  They’ll seek the strange soul, in rain & mist,

  whereas they should recall the pretty cousins they kissed,

  and stick with the sweet switch of the body.

  309

  Fallen leaves & litter. It is September.

  Henry’s months now begin. Much to be done

  by merry Christmas,

  much to be done by the American Thanksgiving

  (I hate these English cigarettes), much to be done,

  much to be done.

  I went shopping today & came back with

  a book about the Easter Rising, reality & myth—

  all Henry’s old heroes,

 
The O’Rahilly, Plunkett, Connolly, & Pearse,

  spring back into action, fatuous campaigners

  dewy with phantastic hope.

  Phantastic hope rules Henry’s war as well,

  all these enterprises are doomed, all human pleas

  are headed for the night.

  Wait the lime-pits for all originators,

  wounded propped up to be executed,

  afterward known as martyrs.

  310

  His gift receded. He could write no more.

  Be silent then, until the thing returns.

  We have Goethe’s warrant

  for idling when no theme presents itself

  or none that can be handled suitably:

  I fall back on that high word.

  I hate his race though, except Hölderlin

  & Kleist, whom he clasped both to Henry’s bosom:

  a suicide & a madman,

  to teach him lessons who was so far neither.

  The language best handled by a foreigner,

  Kafka, old pal.

  Henry, monstrous bug, laid himself down

  on the machine in the penal colony

  without a single regret.

  He was all regret, swallowing his own vomit,

  disappointing people, letting everyone down

  in the forests of the soul.

  311

  Famisht Henry ate everything in sight

  after his ancient fast. His fasting was voluntary,

  self-imposed.

  He specially liked hunks of decent bread

  sopped in olive-oil & cut raw onion,

  specially.

  Hunger was constitutional with him,

  women, cigarettes, liquor, need need need

  until he went to pieces.

  The pieces sat up & wrote. They did not heed

  their piecedom but kept very quietly on

  among the chaos.

  An old old mistress recently rang up,

  here in Ireland, to see how Henry was:

  how was he? delighted!

  He thought she was 3000 miles away,

  safe with her children in New York: she’s coming at five:

  we’ll wélcome her!

  312

  I have moved to Dublin to have it out with you,

  majestic Shade, You whom I read so well