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.
Corpuscule-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—
so 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
ma 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!
In Memoriam (1914-1953)
I
Took my leave (last) five times before the end
and even past these precautions lost the end.
Oh, I was highlone in this corridor
fifteen feet from his bed
where no other hovered, nurse or staff or friend,
and only the terrible breathing ever took place,
but trembling nearer after some small time
I came on the tent collapsed
and silence—O unable to say when.
I stopped panicked a nurse, she a doctor
in twenty seconds, he pulled the plasticine,
bent over, and shook his head at me.
Tubes all over, useless versus coma,
on the third day his principal physician
told me to pray he’d die, brain damage such.
His bare stub feet stuck out.
II
So much for the age’s prodigy, born one day
before I surfaced—when this fact emerged
Dylan grew stuffy and would puff all up
rearing his head back and roar
‘A little more—more—respect there, Berryman!’
Ah he had thát,—so far ahead of me,
I half-adored him for his intricate booms & indecent tales
almost entirely untrue.
Scorn bottomless for elders: we were twenty-three
but Yeats I worshipped: he was amused by this,
all day the day set for my tea with the Great Man
he plotted to turn me up drunk.
Downing me daily at shove-ha’penny
with English on the thing. C—— would slump there
plump as a lump for hours, my world how that changed!
Hard on her widowhood—
III
Apart a dozen years, sober in Seattle
‘After many a summer’ he intoned
putting out a fat hand. We shook hands.
How very shook to see him.
His talk, one told me, clung latterly to Eden,
again & again of the Garden & the Garden’s flowers,
not ever the Creator, only of that creation
with a radiant will to go there.
I have sat hard for twenty years on this
mid potpals’ yapping, and O I sit still still
though I quit crying that same afternoon
of the winter of his going.
Scribbled me once, it’s around somewhere or other,
word of their ‘Edna Millay cottage’ at Laugharne
saying come down to and disarm a while
and down a many few.
O down a many few, old friend,
and down a many few.
Tampa Stomp
The first signs of the death of the boom came in the summer,
early, and everything went like snow in the sun.
Out of their office windows. There was miasma,
a weight beyond enduring, the city reeked of failure.
The eerie, faraway scream of a Florida panther,
gu-roomp of a bull-frog. One broker we knew
drunk-driving down from Tarpon Springs flew free
when it spiralled over & was dead without one mark on him.
The Lord fled that forlorn peninsula
of fine sunlight and millions of fishes & moccasins
& Spanish moss & the Cuban bit my father
bedded & would abandon Mother for.
Ah, an antiquity, a chatter of ghosts.
Half the fish now in half the time
since those blue days died. We’re running out
of time & fathers, sore, artless about it.
The Handshake, The Entrance
‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley’ and
‘You’ve got to cross it by yourself.’
‘Ain’t no one gwine cross it for you,
You’ve got to cross it by yourself.’
Some say John was a baptist, some say John was a Jew,
some say John was just a natural man
addin’ he’s a preacher too?
‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley,’
Friends & lovers, link you and depart.
This one is strictly for me.
I shod myself & said goodbye to Sally
Murmurs of other farewells half broke my heart
I set out sore indeed.
The High King failed to blossom on my enterprise.
Solely the wonderful sun shone down like lead.
Through the ridges I endured,
down in no simple valley I opened my eyes,
with my strong walk down in the vales & dealt with death.
I increased my stride, cured.
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.
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.
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!
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.
‘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
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
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!
FROM
Henry’s Fate & Other Poems, 1967–1972
(1977)
Canal smell. City that lies on the sea like a cork
of stone & gold, manifold throng your ghosts
of murdered & distraught.
St Mark’s remains came here covered with pork,
stolen from Islam. Freedom & power, the Venetian hosts
cluttered blue seas where they sought
the wingèd lion on the conquered gates.