John Berryman

by John Berryman

  Whose coming to be is constant,

  Thou hast caused her coming-to-be in beauty.

  Hello

  Hello there, Biscuit! You’re a better-looking broad

  by much than, and your sister’s dancing up & down.

  ‘I just gave one mighty Push’

  your mother says, and we are all in business.

  I thought your mother might powder my knuckles

  gript at one point, with wild eyes on my tie

  ‘Don’t move!’ and then the screams began,

  they wheeled her off, and we are all in business.

  I wish I knew what business (son) we’re in

  I can’t wait seven weeks to see her grin

  I’m not myself, we are all changing here

  direction and velocity, to accommodate you, dear.

  IV Scherzo

  Navajo Setting the Record Straight

  ‘Warrior Who Went With a Crowd, my sand-painter grandfather,’

  said Axel no-middle-initial Mankey Jr

  to the Marine sarge, ‘served at Fort Wingate

  as a sergeant-major scout, and he was buried

  with full military honors in Arlington.

  So screw you, Sergeant, and your Greek accent.

  Moreover, from the black world into the blue

  came The First People, to the yellow world,

  and finally into the present sick white world

  thro’ a giant reed,—which may be seen to this day

  near Silverton, Colorado. Yah-ah-teh.’

  His unbound black locks wind-flared as back at Left & Right Mittens

  motherless next to the earth-covered log hogan of Mrs Hetty Rye.

  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.

  Defensio in Extremis

  I said: Mighty men have encamped against me,

  and they have questioned not only the depth of my defences

  but my sincerity.

  Now, Father, let them have it.

  Thou knowest, however their outcry & roar,

  in a study of stillness I read my single heart

  after my collapsed returning.

  Oh even A, great E, & tender M

  splinter at my immusical procedures & crude loves.

  Surely some spiritual life is not what it might be?

  Surely they are half-ful of it?

  Tell them to leave me damned well alone with my misunderstood orders.

  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!

  V

  Somber Prayer

  O my Lord, I am not eloquent

  neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast spoken . .

  but I am slow of speech, of a dim tongue.

  He mentions, here, Thy ‘counsel and dominion’;

  so I will borrow Newton’s mouth. Spare me

  Uccello’s ark-locked lurid deluge, I’m

  the brutal oaf from the barrel stuck mid-scene,—

  or ghost me past the waters . . Miriam . .

  A twelve-year-old all solemn, sorry-faced,

  described himself lately as ‘a lifetime prick’.

  Me too. Maladaptive devices.

  At fifty-five, half-effective, I still feel rotten about myself.

  Panicky weekdays, I pray hard,

  not worth.

  Sucking, clinging, following, crying, smiling,

  I come Your child to You.

  Unknowable? perhaps not altogether

  I dare interpret: Adonai of rescue.

  Whatever and ever other I have lain skew over

  however O little else around You know

  I doubt I’m wrong on this.

  Augustine and Pascal swore the same strange.

  Yet young men young men in the paddies rescue.

  Add Sway omnicompetent, add pergalactic Intellect,

  forbearance invisible, a tumbling thunder of laughter

  (or whence our so alert pizzazz & laughter?),

  an imagination of the queens of Chartres the kings there, if these only, still

  we’re trans-acting with You.

  Minnesota Thanksgiving

  For that free Grace bringing us past great risks

  & thro’ great griefs surviving to this feast

  sober & still, with the children unborn and born,

  among brave friends, Lord, we stand again in debt

  and find ourselves in the glad position: Gratitude.

  We praise our ancestors who delivered us here

  within warm walls all safe, aware of music,

  likely toward ample & attractive meat

  with whatever accompaniment

  Kate in her kind ingenuity has seen fit to devise,

  and we hope—across the most strange year to come—

  continually to do them and You not sufficient honour

  but such as we become able to devise

  out of a decent or joyful conscience & thanksgiving.

  Yippee!

  Bless then, as Thou wilt, this wilderness board.

&nbs
p; 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.

  Overseas Prayer

  Good evening. At the feet of the king, my Lord,

  I fall seven & yet seven times.

  Behold what insult has Your servant suffered

  from Shuwardata and Milkiln & his ilk.

  Put them under saws, & under harrows of iron,

  & under axes of iron, make them pass thro’ the brick-kiln

  lest upon any time they flirt at me again.

  Enjoin them to the blurred & breathless dead.

  The Valley of the Cheesemakers has disappeared

  also, my Lord. Your precincts are in ruin,

  your revenues ungathered. Minarets

  blot our horizon as I pen, my Lord.

  I feel myself a deep & old objection.

  You gave me not a very able tho’ of integrity father,

  joyless at last, Lord, and sometimes I hardly

  (thinking on him) perform my duty to you.

  Ah then I mutter ‘Forty-odd years past.

  Do I yet repine?’ and go about your business,—

  a fair wind and the honey lights of home

  being all I beg this wind-torn foreign evening.

  Amos

  For three insane things evil, and for four,

  vex will I Pekin in the latter days,

  their ancestors shall suffer for their children

  in turbid horror; thus saith the Lord.

  For three insane things evil, and for four,

  grieve will I Kremlin present’, & the Urals

  & dachas, and I will tear their leaderhood

  that many may fly home; saith the Lord.

  For three insane things evil, and for four,

  baffle will I with victory Hanoi

  & gross pretenders, the black megaphone

  of doctrine over the tribe’s hills; saith the Lord.

  For three insane things evil, and for four,

  sustain will I puny & greedy Thieu

  the potent client—harrowing that people on,

  and I will have no pity, saith the Lord.

  For three insane things evil, and for four,

  torment will I the North & South & East

  & West with understanding, where they stand,

  and I will unman & de-parent them

  and will deprive them; thus saith the Lord.

  Certainty Before Lunch

  Ninety percent of the mass of the Universe

  (90%!) may be gone in collapsars,

  pulseless, lightless, forever—if they exist.

  My friends the probability man & I

  & his wife the lawyer are taking a country walk

  in the flowerless April snow in exactly two hours

  and maybe won’t come back. Finite & unbounded

  the massive spirals absolutely fly

  distinctly apart, by math and observation,

  current math, this morning’s telescopes

  & inference. My wife is six months gone

  so won’t be coming. That mass must be somewhere!

  or not? just barely possibly may not

  BE anywhere? My Lord, I’m glad we don’t

  on x or y depend for Your being there.

  I know You are there. The sweat is, I am here.

  The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man

  Amid the doctors in the Temple at twelve, between

  mother & host at Cana implored too soon,

  in the middle of disciples, the midst of the mob,

  between the High Priest and the Procurator,

  among the occupiers,

  between the malefactors, and ‘stetit in medio,

  et dixit, Pax vobis’ and ‘ascensit ad medium

  Personarum et caelorum,’ dear my Lord,

  mercy a sinner nailed dead-centre too,

  pray not implored too late,—

  for also Ezra stood between the seven & the six,

  restoring the new Law.

  ‘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

  The Facts & Issues

  I really believe He’s here all over this room

  in a motor hotel in Wallace Stevens’ town.

  I admit it’s weird; and could—or could it?—not be so;

  but frankly I don’t think there’s a molecular chance of that.

  It doesn’t seem hypothesis. Thank heavens

  millions agree with me, or mostly do,

  and have done ages of our human time,

  among whom were & still are some very sharp cookies.

  I don’t exactly feel missionary about it,

  though it’s very true I wonder if I should.

  I regard the boys who don’t buy this as deluded.

  Of course they regard me no doubt as deluded.

  Okay with me! And not the hell with them

  at all—no!—I feel dubious on Hell—

  it’s here, all right, but elsewhere, after? Screw that,

  I feel pretty sure that evil simply ends

  for the doer (having wiped him out,

  by the way, usually) where good goes on,

  or good may drop dead too: I don’t think so:

  I can’t say I have hopes in that department

  myself, I lack ambition just just there,

  I know that Presence says it’s mild, and it’s mild,

  but being what I am I wouldn’t care

  to dare go nearer. Happy to be here

  and to have been here, with such lovely ones

  so infinitely better, but to me

  even in their suffering infinitely kind

  & blessing. I am a greedy man, of course,

  but I wouldn’t want that kind of luck continued,—

  or even increased (for Christ’s sake), & forever?

  Let me be clear about this. It is plain to me

  Christ underwent man & treachery & socks

  & lashes, thirst, exhaustion, the bit, for my pathetic & disgusting vices,

  to make this filthy fact of particular, long-after,

  far-away, five-foot-ten & moribund

  human being happy. Well, he has!

  I am so happy I could scream!

  It’s enough! I can’t B E A R A N Y M O R E.

  Let this be it. I’ve had it. I can’t wait.

  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

&nbs
p; 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!

  EARLY POEMS

  from “Twenty Poems” in Five Young American Poets [1940]

  Song from “Cleopatra”

  From Pharos I have seen her white

  Standing with Pompey while the moon

  Twice turned and made a silver noon

  Upon the Alexandrian night.

  When air was olive, she but young,

  Ambition died into delight.

  A bird there was that died and then

  Struck from its ashes into life.

  Resentment got continual strife

  And blood upon the marsh and fen.

  Limp in the antique arms of one

  She learnt her hatred for all men.

  That Queen insulted Cicero,

  Lucan and Horace threw a gibe,

  But Antony and all his tribe

  Cut out the hearts that called her so.

  Wandering upon her terrace

  They go and ask not where they go.

  What symbol of degraded death

  Will now sustain what she has been?

  Not a Tanagra figurine

  From out the tumult and the wrath.

  Perhaps the sensual eye, the pride

  That spent itself before her breath.

  The Apparition

  Frequently when the night

  Binds Austria and England in

  One indiscriminate place,

  Staring I see between

  A familiar chair and the slight

  Smile of a fresco god your face.

  Which from the advancing eye

  Withdraws, miles in an instant,

  Is quite gone, and the god

  Resumes his banishment

  To curtain mathematics: dry

  And bitter the brain is in my head.

  Could I suspend sight where

  It met you, could I command

  Instinct be still, blood still,