John Berryman

by John Berryman

  33.1

  Cf., on Byzantine icons, Frederick Rolfe (‘Baron Corvo’): ‘Who ever dreams of praying (with expectation of response) for the prayer of a Tintoretto or a Titian, or a Bellini, or a Botticelli? But who can refrain from crying “O Mother!” to these unruffleable wan dolls in indigo on gold?’ (quoted from The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole by Graham Greene in The Lost Childhood).

  33.5, 6

  ‘Délires des grandes profondeurs,’ described by Cousteau and others; a euphoria, sometimes fatal, in which the hallucinated diver offers passing fish his line, helmet, anything.

  35.3, 4

  As of cliffhangers, movie serials wherein each week’s episode ends with a train bearing down on the strapped heroine or with the hero dangling over an abyss into which Indians above him peer with satisfaction before they hatchet the rope. rescue: forcible recovery (by the owner) of goods distrained.

  37.7, 8

  After an engraving somewhere in Fuchs’s collections. Bray, above (36.4), puns.

  39.5

  The stanza is unsettled, like 24, by a middle line, signaling a broad transition.

  42.8

  brutish: her epithet for London in a kindly passage about the Great Fire.

  46.1, 2

  Arminians, rebels against the doctrine of unconditional election. Her husband alone opposed the law condemning Quakers to death.

  46.3, 4

  Matthew 3:12.

  46.5, 6

  Rheumatic fever, after a celebrated French description.

  48.2ff.

  Space … outside: delirium.

  51.5 Cf.

  Zech. 14:20.

  51.6

  Wandering pacemaker: a disease of the heart, here the heart itself.

  52.4

  Seaborn Cotton, John’s eldest son; Bradstreet being then magistrate.

  52.5, 6

  Dropsical, a complication of the last three years. Line 7 she actually said.

  55.4

  thrift: the plant, also called Our Lady’s cushion.

  55.8

  wet brain: edema.

  56.5, 6

  Cf. G. R. Levy, The Gate of Horn, p. 5.

  HIS THOUGHT MADE POCKETS & THE PLANE BUCKT

  [1958]

  Henry sats in de plane & was gay.

  Careful Henry nothing said aloud

  but where a virgin out of cloud

  to her Mountain dropt in light

  his thought made pockets & the plane buckt.

  ‘Parm me, Lady.’ ‘Orright.’

  Venice, 182-

  White & blue my breathing lady leans

  across me in the first light, so we kiss.

  The corners of her eyes are white. I miss,

  renew. She means

  to smother me thro’ years of this.

  Hell chill young widows in the heel of night—

  perduring loves, melody’s thrusting, press

  flush with the soft skin, whence they sprung! back. Less

  ecstasy might

  save us for speech & politeness.

  I hear her howl now, and I slam my eyes

  against the glowing face. Foul morning-cheese

  stands fair compared to love. On waspish knees

  our pasts surprise

  and plead us livid. Now she frees

  a heavy lock was pulling . . I kiss it,

  lifting my hopeless lids—and all trace

  of passion’s vanisht from her eyes & face,

  the lip I bit

  is bluer, a blackhead at the base

  of her smooth nose looks sullenly at me,

  we look at each other in entire despair,

  her eyes are swimming by mine, and I swear

  sobbing quickly

  we áre in love. The light hurts. ‘There…’

  Scots Poem

  Loversgrove lay

  off to the lighthearted south,

  chat-south, miles & more miles. Weel,

  mot-tive flunks a man’s mouth seems full of teeth.

  Peered at her long

  sidewise and would not or could

  not say Love will be leaping

  hopeless forever, hard on one who stood

  near to her long

  till she lookt poorly and died.

  Braird in the breast evergreen,

  grey the fieldgrass though, man’s friend. I’m inside.—

  —Trumpet shall sound,

  angel & archangel cry

  ‘Come forth, Isobel Mitchel,

  and meet William Matheson in the sky.’

  The Mysteries

  (a crazed man calls)

  And now you be my guest.

  Thinking like wings, solemn with moons & truth,

  I accost you on a summit of your honour

  Erich Kahler for you shoot like a tooth

  Where you grill, if others glare in wonder,

  You too have to come out

  And now you be my guest.

  At the trice of harvest to a middle ground

  I ascend and seek the hollow of my tree

  Central in a grove and call: cherry sound

  Swelling through swart night, near the sea, near sea,

  Men aye did charm abroad

  And now you be my guest

  For peace to peace will not assuage or answer

  My goddess at the Cross-ways. Crown the gong!

  Rears the first fox, and ducks, and is a dancer!

  The stonechat clatters in the bracken! Song

  Through flutes shrugs up from bronze

  And now you be my guest.

  In the sea-green blindness I found Thetis kind

  And you will find me with you. I must sing

  Passions unended while you are turning, blind,

  Great blows thukk in darkness, thickening

  Cymbals, a small hand waves,

  And so you be my guest

  Uncircling, you who were a dancing man

  Dance in darkness! Drips off our grapes blood,

  They scream, the child is swinging on the fan,

  A purpose tightens in the thigh of god

  Like your heart in the drums’ thunder

  And now you be my guest

  While leaping mouths rage forward and white eyes,

  Coarse night between smooth laurel boles, crowns shove

  And crack to be timely at the sacrifice

  Where I go to pieces. I am lived by love,

  And I am partly dying

  And now you be my guest

  So we go, one, for wineless ecstasy

  And whether will ever either back O turn

  Is known, and the snow is hovering over the sea

  And the child cries, and worshippers will burn

  The sweet lost leaves of my trees.

  They Have

  A thing O say a sixteenth of an inch

  long, with whiskers

  & wings it doesn’t use, & many legs,

  has all this while been wandering in a tiny space

  on the black wood table by my burning chair.

  I see it has a feeler of some length

  it puts out before it.

  That must be how it was following the circuit

  of the bottom of my wine-glass, vertical: Mâcon: I thought

  it smelt & wanted some but couldn’t get hold.

  Now here’s another thing, on my paper, a fluff

  of legs, and I blow: my brothers & sisters go away.

  But here he’s back, & got between the pad

  & padback, where I save him and

  shift him to my blue shirt, where he is.

  The other little one’s gone somewhere else.

  They have things easy.

  The Poet’s Final Instructions

  Dog-tired, suisired, will now my body down

  near Cedar Avenue in Minneap,

  when my crime comes. I am blazing with hope.

  Do me glory, come the whole way across town.

  I couldn�
��t rest from hell just anywhere,

  in commonplaces. Choiring & strange my pall!

  I might not lie still in the waste of St Paul

  or buy DAD’S root beer; good signs I forgive.

  Drop here, with honour due, my trunk & brain

  among the passioning of my countrymen

  unable to read, rich, proud of their tags

  and proud of me. Assemble all my bags!

  Bury me in a hole, and give a cheer,

  near Cedar on Lake Street, where the used cars live.

  from The Black Book (i)

  Grandfather, sleepless in a room upstairs,

  Seldom came down; so when they tript him down

  We wept. The blind light sang about his ears,

  Later we heard. Brother had pull. In pairs

  He, some, slept upon stone.

  Later they stamped him down in mud.

  The windlass drew him silly & odd-eyed, blood

  Broke from his ears before they quit.

  Before they trucked him home they cleaned him up somewhat.

  Only the loose eyes’ glaze they could not clean

  And soon he died. He howled a night and shook

  Our teeth before the end; we breathed again

  When he stopt. Abraham, what we have seen

  Write, I beg, in your Book.

  No more the solemn and high bells

  Call to our pall; we call or gibber; Hell’s

  Irritable & treacherous

  Despairs here here (not him) reach now to shatter us.

  from The Black Book (ii)

  Luftmenschen dream, the men who live on air,

  Of other values, in the blackness watching

  Peaceful for gangs or a quick raid,

  The ghetto nods a mortal head

  Soundless but for a scurry, a sigh, retching,—

  No moan of generation fear.

  Hands hold each other limper

  While the moon lengthens on the sliding river.

  Prolong the woolen night—Solomon sang—

  And never the soul with its own revenge encumber

  But like a cry of cranes dies out,

  Ecstatic, faint, a moment float-

  ing, flying soul, or flares like August timber

  In wild woe vanishing.

  Blue grows from grey, towards slaughter.

  (An Ashkenazi genius stoned Ivan; a sculptor.)

  ‘Boleslaus brought us here, surnamed the Good,

  Whose dust rolls nearly seven hundred years

  Towards Sirius: we thank that King

  As for the ledge whereto we cling,

  Night in the caves under the ruins; stars,

  Armbands come off, for which we could

  Be glad but the black troops gather.’

  So those who kneel in the paling sky & shiver.

  * * *

  Dawn like a rose unfolds—flower of parks—

  Alleys of limetrees, villas, ponds, a palace

  Down a deserted riverbed,

  The Lazienki Gardens’ pride,

  Monument to a king able and callous

  Who far Vienna from the Turks

  Bloodily did deliver.

  For foreigners, now, a sort of theatre.

  One officer in black demarches here

  Cupshot, torn collar by a girl unwilling

  Native & blond through the debauch

  That kept him all night from his couch,

  Hurts his head and from the others’ howling

  Drove him out for morning air.

  Brooding over the water

  He reddens suddenly. He went back & shot her.

  from The Black Book (iii)

  Lover & child, a little sing.

  From long-lockt cattle-cars who grope

  Who near a place of showers come

  Foul no more, whose murmuring

  Grows in a hiss of gas will clear them home:

  Away from & toward me: a little soap,

  Disrobing, Achtung! in a dirty hope,

  They shuffle with their haircuts in to die.

  Lift them an elegy, poor you and I,

  Fair & strengthless as seafoam

  Under a deserted sky.

  A Sympathy, A Welcome

  Feel for your bad fall how could I fail,

  poor Paul, who had it so good.

  I can offer you only: this world like a knife.

  Yet you’ll get to know your mother

  and humourless as you do look you will laugh

  and all the others

  will NOT be fierce to you, and loverhood

  will swing your soul like a broken bell

  deep in a forsaken wood, poor Paul,

  whose wild bad father loves you well.

  Not to Live

  (Jamestown 1957)

  It kissed us, soft, to cut our throats, this coast,

  like a malice of the lazy King. I hunt,

  & hunt! but find here what to kill?—nothing is blunt,

  but phantoming uneases I find. Ghost

  on ghost precedes of all most scared us, most

  we fled. Howls fail upon this secret, far air: grunt,

  shaming for food; you must. I love the King

  & it was not I who strangled at the toast

  but a flux of a free & dying adjutant:

  God be with him. He & God be with us all,

  for we are not to live. I cannot wring,

  like laundry, blue my soul—indecisive thing . .

  From undergrowth & over odd birds call

  and who would starv’d so survive? God save the King.

  American Lights, Seen From Off Abroad

  Blue go up & blue go down

  to light the lights of Dollartown

  Nebuchadnezzar had it so good?

  wink the lights of Hollywood

  I never think, I have so many things,

  flash the lights of Palm Springs

  I worry like a madwoman over all the world,

  affirm the lights, all night, at State

  I have no plans, I mean well,

  swear the lights of Georgetown

  I have the blind staggers

  call the lights of Niagara

  We shall die in a palace

  shout the black lights of Dallas

  I couldn’t dare less, my favorite son,

  fritter the lights of Washington

  (I have a brave old So-and-so,

  chuckle the lights of Independence, Mo.)

  I cast a shadow, what I mean,

  blurt the lights of Abilene

  Both his sides are all the same

  glows his grin with all but shame

  ‘He can do nothing night & day,’

  wonder his lovers. So they say.

  ‘Basketball in outer space’

  sneers the White New Hampshire House

  I’ll have a smaller one, later, Mac,

  hope the strange lights of Cal Tech

  I love you one & all, hate shock,

  bleat the lights of Little Rock

  I cannot quite focus

  cry the lights of Las Vegas

  I am a maid of shots & pills,

  swivel the lights of Beverly Hills

  Proud & odd, you give me vertigo,

  fly the lights of San Francisco

  I am all satisfied love & chalk,

  mutter the great lights of New York

  I have lost your way

  say the white lights of Boston

  Here comes a scandal to blight you to bed.

  ‘Here comes a cropper.’ That’s what I said.

  Lévanto

  7 October 1957

  Note to Wang Wei

  How could you be so happy, now some thousand years

  disheveled, puffs of dust?

  It leaves me uneasy at last,

  your poems teaze me to the verge of tears

  and your fate. It makes me think.

  It makes me long for mountains & blue waters.
<
br />   Makes me wonder how much to allow.

  (I’m reconfirming, God of bolts & bangs,

  of fugues & bucks, whose rocket burns & sings.)

  I wish we could meet for a drink

  in a ‘freedom from ten thousand matters.’

  Be dust myself pretty soon; not now.

  Formal Elegy

  [1964]

  I

  A hurdle of water, and O these waters are cold

  (warm at outset) in the dirty end.

  Murder on murder on murder, where I stagger,

  whiten the good land where we have held out.

  These kills were not for loot,

  however Byzantium hovers in the mind:

  were matters of principle—that’s worst of all—

  & fear & crazed mercy.

  Ruby, with his mad claim

  he shot to spare the Lady’s testifying,

  probably is sincere.

  No doubt, in his still cell, his mind sits pure.

  II

  Yes, it looks like a wilderness—pacem appellant.

  Honour to Patrolman Tippit. Peace to the rifler’s widow.

  Seven, I believe, play fatherless.

  III

  Scuppered the yachts, the choppers, big cars, jets.

  Nobody goes anywhere,

  lengthened (days) into TV.

  I am four feet long, invisibly.

  What in the end will be left of us is a stare,

  underwater.

  If you want me to join you in confident prayer, let’s

  not.

  I sidled in & past, gazing upon it,

  the bier.

  IV

  Too Andean hopes, now angry shade.—

  I am an automobile. Into me climb

  many, and go their ways. Onto him climbed

  a-many and went his way.

  For a while we seemed to be having a holiday

  off from ourselves—ah, but the world is wigs,

  as sudden we came to feel

  and even hís splendid hair kept not wholly real