If not white shorts—then in a princess gown
Images of Elspeth
Imagine a crowded war-time street
Impossible to speak to her, and worse
In & Out
In a poem made by Cummings, long since, his
In Memoriam (1914–1953)
In my serpentine researches
Infallible symbolist!—Tanker driven ashore
Interstitial Office
Is it possible, poor kids, you must not come out?
It is supernal what a youth can take
It kissed us, soft, to cut our throats, this coast
It seems to be DARK all the time
It was the sky all day I grew to and saw
It will seem strange, no more this range on range
Itself a lightning-flash ripping the ‘dark
Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when
King David Dances
Languid the songs I wish I willed . . I try
Lauds
Let us rejoice on our cots, for His nocturnal miracles
Letter to His Brother
Lines to Mr Frost
Lockout. The seventh week. Men in the Square
London
Long long with wonder I thought you human
Lover & child, a little sing
Loversgrove lay
Loves are the summer’s. Summer like a bee
Luftmenschen dream, the men who live on air
Mallarmé siren upside down,—rootedly!
Man with a tail heads eastward for the Fair
Marble nor monuments whereof then we spoke
Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake
Matins
Meditation
Meeting
Ménage à trois, like Tristan’s,—difficult!
Message
Minnesota Thanksgiving
Monkhood
Most strange, my change, this nervous interim
Moths white as ghosts among these hundreds cling
Motions of waking trouble winter air
Musculatures and skulls. Later some throng
Mutinous & free I drifted off
Mutinous in the half-light, & malignant, grind
My intense friend was tall & strongly made
My offended contempt for the mental & stylistic workings of Ruskin & Carlyle
My Special Fate
Narcissus Moving
Navajo Setting the Record Straight
Near the top a bad turn some dare. Well
New Year’s Eve
Niceties of symbolism & identification
Night and the City
Nineteen Thirty-Eight
Ninety percent of the mass of the Universe
No
Noise of the vans woke us before we would
Nones
Not to Live
Note to Wang Wei
Nothing there? nothing up the sky alive
Nowhere
O! I had my gyp prepare that tea
O a little lonely in Cambridge that first Fall
O lithest Shirley! & the other worlds
O my Lord, I am not eloquent
O parakeets & avocets, O immortelles
‘O tell me of the Russians, Communist, my son!’
O when I grunted, over lines and her
Occludes wild dawn. Up thro’ green ragged clouds
October’s both, back in the Sooner State
Of all that weeks-long day, though call it back
Of Suicide
Oh half as fearful for the yawning day
Old Man Goes South Again Alone
‘Old Smoky’ when you sing with Robin, Chris
Olympus
On the London Train
On the night of the Belgian surrender the moon rose
On the wheat-sacks sullen with the ceaseless damp
Once when they found me, some refrain ‘Quoi faire?’
One luncheon party in Andy’s rooms in Magdalene
One night in Albany
One note, a daisy, and a photograph
‘One of the wits of the school’ your chum would say
1 September 1939
Opus Dei
Our lives before hopelessly our mistake!
Our love conducted as in tropic rain
Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying
Outlaws claw mostly to a riddled end
Overseas Prayer
Parting as Descent
Presidential flags! and the General is here
Prime
Problem. I cannot come among Your saints
Purgatory
(. . rabid or dog-dull.) Let me tell you how
Rackman and victim twist: sounds all these weeks
Rectitude, and the terrible upstanding member
Recovery
Reflexions on suicide, & on my father, possess me
Relations
Revelations every two hours on the Lounge
‘Ring us up when you want to see us…’—‘Sure’
River Rouge, 1932
Rock-Study with Wanderer
Sanctuary
Scholars at the Orchid Pavilion
Scots Poem
Sensible, coarse, and moral; in decent brown
Sext
She says: Seek help! Ha-ha Ha-ha & Christ
Shirley & Auden
Sick with the lightning lay my sister-in-law
Sigh as it ends . . I keep an eye on your
Sleep! In your boat brought into the living room
Slumped under the impressive genitals
Snow on the ground. A day in March
Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me
Somber Prayer
Some sketch sweat’ out, unwilling swift & crude
Sometimes the night echoes to prideless wailing
Song from “Cleopatra”
Song of the Man Forsaken and Obsessed
Sozzled, Mo-tsu, after a silence, vouchsafed
Spendthrift Urethra—Sphincter, frugal one
Still it pleads and rankles: ‘Why do you love me?’
Summoned from offices and homes, we came
Sunderings and luxations, luxe, and grief-
Surprise me on some ordinary day
Surviving Love
Swarthy when young; who took the tonsure; sign
Tampa Stomp
Tea
Terce
Thanksgiving: Detroit
The Animal Trainer (1)
The Animal Trainer (2)
The Apparition
The Ball Poem
The Black Book (i) from
The Black Book (ii) from
The Black Book (iii) from
The Captain’s Song
The clapper hovers, but why run so hard?
The clots of age, grovel and palsy, crave
The clouds before the sun when the sun rose
The cold rewards trail in, when the man is blind
The crowd moves forward on the midway, back
The Curse
The Dangerous Year
The days are over, I leave after breakfast
The dew is drying fast, a last drop glistens
The Disciple
The Dispossessed
The Enemies of the Angels
The Facts & Issues
The fireflies and the stars our only light
The first signs of the death of the boom came in the summer
The first, scattering rain on the Polish cities
The Form
The Governor your husband lived so long
The grey girl who had not been singing stopped
The Handshake, The Entrance
The Hell Poem
The Heroes
The history of strangers in their dreams
The Home Ballad
The Irish and the Italians own the place
The lady in her silver-
The Lightning
The
Long Home
The man who made her let me climb the derrick
The Moon and the Night and the Men
The Mysteries
The Nervous Songs
The night is on these hills, and some can sleep
The Old Boys’ blazers like a Mardi-Gras
The old men wept when the Old Man in blue
The Other Cambridge
The oxen gone, the house is fallen where
The Pacifist’s Song
The poet hunched, so, whom the worlds admire
The Poet’s Final Instructions
The Possessed
The Prayer of the Middle-Aged Man
The problem is urgent, yes, for this hot light
The round and smooth, my body in my bath
The Search
The Song of the Bridegroom
The Song of the Demented Priest
The Song of the Tortured Girl
The Song of the Young Hawaiian
The Spinning Heart
The Statue
The statue, tolerant through years of weather
The summer cloud in summer blue
The sun rushed up the sky; the taxi flew
The terrible trains crawl seaward thro’ the South
The three men coming down the winter hill
The Traveller
The tree before my eyes bloomed into flame
The Trial
The two plantations Greatgrandmother brought
The weather in the drawing-room
They come too thick, hail-hard, and all beside
They Have
They may, because I would not cloy your ear
They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
This afternoon, discomfortable dead
Thou hard. I will be blunt: Like widening
Three, almost, now into the ass’s years
Thrice, or I moved to sack, I saw you: how
Thus far, to March, into the dangerous year
To a Woman
Today is it? Is it today? I shudder
Tom Grumbold’s bridge has balusters set diagonally
Took my leave (last) five times before the end
Traitoring words,—tearing my thought across
Transit
Travelling South
Troubling are masks . . the faces of friends, my face
Two Organs
Two men sat by a stone in what dim place
Tyranny of your car—so far resembles
Tyson & Jo, Tyson & Jo
Under new management, Your Majesty
Unknowable? perhaps not altogether
Vanity! hog-vanity, ape-lust
Venice
Vespers
Views of Myself
Viridian and gamboge and vermilion
‘Warrior Who Went With a Crowd, my sand-painter grandfather’
Washington in Love
We are to tell one man tonight good-bye
We must work & play and John Jacob Niles
What can to you this music wakes my years
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball
What was Ashore, then? . . Cargoed with Forget
When I peered out, he had nine nights to spare
When I recall I could believe you’d go
Where the lane from the highway swerves the first drops fell
Whether the moorings are invisible
Whether There Is Sorrow in the Demons
White & blue my breathing lady leans
White Feather
Who am I worthless that You spent such pains
Who for those ages ever without some blood
Whom undone David upto the dire van sent
Why can’t, Chris, why shouldn’t they fall in love?
Winter Landscape
World’s Fair
World-Telegram
You come blonde visiting through the black air
You in your stone home where the sycamore
You sailed in sky-high, with your speech askew
You should be gone in winter, that Nature mourn
‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley’ and
You, Chris, contrite I never thought to see
Young Woman’s Song
Your Birthday in Wisconsin You Are 140
Your letter came.—Glutted the earth & cold
Your shining—where?—rays my wide room with gold
JOHN BERRYMAN: COLLECTED POEMS, 1937–1971. Copyright © 1989 by Kate Donahue Berryman.
All rights reserved.
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eISBN 9781466879584
First eBook edition: July 2014
John Berryman Page 38