John Berryman

by John Berryman

  several wept) I will not kneel just now,

  Father. I know I must

  but being black & galled for these young men,

  sick with their savage Judge

  (‘we felt we had no alternative,

  since all their evidence was ordered stricken’)—

  deep fatigue.

  Conducting his own defence: ‘men do pass laws

  that usurp God’s power …

  I hope you’ll try in your own way to speak peace.

  God guide you.’ Grim the prosecutor:

  ‘He’s trying to weasel his way out of it.’

  Draft records here would have gone up in fire.

  Peasant ladies & poupies there went up go up in fire.

  Who sat thro’ all three trials tells me the juror in blue

  looked inconsolably sad, and hid her eyes,

  when one propped up on his table a little hand-lettered sign

  WE LOVE YOU.

  The judge is called P N.

  This is of record. Where slept then Your lightning?

  Loafed Your torque.

  Well. Help us all! Yes—yes—I kneel.

  Terce

  Oh half as fearful for the yawning day

  where full the Enemy’s paratus and

  I clearly may

  wholly from prime time fail, as yet from yesterday

  with good heart grateful having gone no more

  (under what gentle tempting You knew I bore)

  than what occurred astray,

  I almost at a loss now genuflect and pray:

  Twice, thrice each day five weeks at ‘as we forgive

  those who trespass against us’ I have thought

  ah his envenomed & most insolent missive

  and I have done it!—and I damn him still

  odd times & unawares catch myself at it:

  I’m not a good man, I won’t ever be,

  there’s no health in here. You expect too much.

  This pseudo-monk is all but at despair.

  My blustering & whining & ill will

  versus His will—Forgive my insolence,

  since when I was a fervent child to You

  and Father Boniface each 5 a.m.

  But this world that was not. Lavender & oval,

  lilac, dissolve into one’s saying hurriedly

  ‘In sex my husband is brutal, beating, dirty, and drunk.’

  Has this become Thy will, Thou Reconciler?

  I seem to hear Retreat blast thro’ bleared air

  back to an unassailable redoubt,

  even old Nile-sounds, where ‘tears’ & ‘men’ sound the same

  and ‘not to be’ & ‘be complete’ are one.

  Ugh. What the hell quail I perplexed about?

  Christ Jesus. Gethsemane & Calvary

  & the Emmaus road, hardly propose

  (someone was saying) most of us are lost.

  Sext

  High noon has me pitchblack, so in hope out,

  slipping thro’ stasis, my heart skeps a beat

  actuellement,

  reflecting on the subtler menace of decline.

  Who mentioned in his middle age ‘Great Death

  wars in us living which will have us all’

  caused choreographers to tinker maps

  pointing a new domestic capital

  and put before Self-Preservation ‘1)’.

  We do not know, deep now the dire age on,

  if it’s so, or mere a nightmare of one dark one,

  Mani’s by no means ultimate disciple.

  I personally call it: outmoded biology,

  of even mutation ignorant,

  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.

  Corpuscle-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—

  s
o 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

  man 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!

  II

  Washington in Love

  I

  Rectitude, and the terrible upstanding member

  II

  The music of our musketry (my first) is: beautiful

  III

  Intolerable Sally, loved in vain

  IV

  Mr John Adams of Massachusetts . . I accept, gentlemen.

  * * *

  V

  Aloes. Adders. Roman gratitude.

  VI

  My porch elevation from the Potomac in 174′ 7½″.

  VII

  Bring the wounded, Martha! B R I N G T H E W O U N D E D, M E N.

  Beethoven Triumphant

  1

  Dooms menace from tumults. Who’s immune

  among our mightier of headed men?

  Chary with his loins

  womanward, he begot us an enigma.

  2

  Often pretended he was absentminded

  whenas he couldn’t hear; and often was.

  ‘… always he, he everywhere, as one says of Napoleon’

  (Sir John Russell in ’21 hearing a Trio)

  3

  O migratory rooms, the unworthy brothers, the worthless nephew!

  One time his landlord tipped a hat to him;

  Beethoven moved. Awkward & plangent

  charged to the Archduke’s foot,—who told his court ‘Leave him alone.’

  4

  My unpretending love’s the B flat major

  by the old Budapest done. Schnabel did record

  the Diabelli varia. I can’t get a copy.

  Then there’s Casals I have, 101, both parts.

  5

  Moments are, early on in the 4th Piano Concerto

  show him at his unrivalled middle best.

  It does go up and up, and down lingeringly.

  Miser & Timon-giving, by queer turns.

  6

  They wanted him London, partout. ‘Too late’, ‘Too late’

  he muttered, and mimicked piano-playing.

  Prodigious, so he never knew his age

  his father’d lied about.

  7

  Whatever his kindness to Rossini and contempt for Italians,

  if down he sat a while in an exquisite chair

  it had to be thrown out (five witnesses,

  none of whom says quite why).

  8

  O did he sleep sound? Heavy, heavy that.

  Waked at 3:30 not by some sonata

  but by a botched rehearsal of the Eighth

  where all thing has to go right

  (Koussevitzky will make it, Master; lie back down)

  9

  Lies of his fluency from Betty von Arnim

  to eager Goethe, who’d not met the man.

  Fact is, he stumbled at the start

  and in the sequence, stumbled in the middle,

  10

  often unsure at the end—shown by his wilderness

  on-sketchings encrusted like Tolstoy (not Mozart:

  who’d, ripping napkins, the whole strict in mind

  before notes serried; limitationless, unlike you).

  11

  Inundations out from ground zero.

  Back from an over-wealth, the simplification of Necessity.

  When brother Johann signed ‘Real Estate Owner’, you: ‘Brain owner’.

  And what, among fumbling notes, in the nights, did you read?

  12

  Coffee and tallow spot your Odyssey

  though, and when Schindler was an arse to ask

  your drift in Opus 31 and the Appassionata

  you uttered at him, cheerful, ‘Just read The Tempest.’

  13

  Thinking presides, some think now,—only presides—

  at the debate of the Instincts; but presides,

  over powers, over love, hurt-back.

  You grumbled: ‘Religion and Figured Bass are closed concepts.

  Don’t argue.’

  14

  To disabuse the ‘Heiligerdankgesang’?

  Men up to now sometimes weep openly.

  Tortured your surly star to sing impossibly

  against the whole (small) thwarting orchestra.

  One chord thrusts, as it must

  15

  find allies, foes, resolve, in subdued crescendo.

 
; Unfazed, you built-in the improbable.

  You clowned. You made throats swallow

  and shivered the backs of necks.

  You made quiver with glee, at will; not long.

  This world is of male energy male pain.

  16

  Softnesses, also, yours, which become us.

  What stayed your chosen instrument? The ’cello?

  At two points. At others, the forte-piano.

  At others, the fiddles & viola & ’cello.

  17

  I’m hard to you, odd nights. I bulge my brain,

  my shut chest already suffers,—so I play blues

  and Haydn whom you—both the which touch but they don’t ache me.

  I’m less inured in your disaster corner,

  Master. You interfere.

  O yes we interfere

  or we’re mere sweetening: what? the alkali lives

  around and after ours. Sleeking down nerves

  Passing time dreaming. And you did do that too.

  There hover Things cannot be banned by you;

  damned few.

  If we take our head in our ears and listen

  Ears! Ears! the Devil paddled in you

  18

  heard not a hill flute or a shepherd sing!

  tensing your vision onto an alarm

  of gravid measures, sequent to demure,

  all we fall, absently foreknowing . .

  You force a blurt: Who was I?

  Am I these tutti, am I this rallentando?

  This entrance of the oboe?

  I am all these

  the sane man makes reply on the locked ward.

  19

  Did ever you more than (clearly) cope odd women?

  save clumsy uncommitted overtures

  au moins à Joséphine? save the world-famous unsent

  or when retrieved and past-death-treasured letter?

  20

  Deception spared. No doubt he took one look:

  ‘Not mine; I can’t make a kroner there.’

  Straightforward staves, dark bars,

  late motions toward the illegible. Musical thighs,

  21

  spared deep age. Out at prime, in a storm

  inaudible thunder he went, upon his height.

  The other day I called our chief prose-writer

  at home a thousand miles off and began

  ‘How are you, Sir?’ out of three decades’ amity

  22

  ‘I’m OLD,’ he said. Neither of us laughed.

  Spared deep age, Beethoven. I wish you’d caught

  young Schubert’s last chamberworks and the Winterreise

  you could have read through, puffing.

  23

  Ah but the indignities you flew free from,

  your self-abasements even would increase