Tricky Dick the coach was pleased, for a change.
He returned the first offense, like a mountain range.
We still lost to The Gunnery, hooray.
At the tea afterward I askt him why
he hadn’t replaced mé: he said we were lost,
let the discredit go where it belongs.
Thank you, I call back down the whiskey years—
he came to hear me in Chicago with both ears—
god knows what he thought of them Songs.
I have more respect for him than I have for me,
and yet I said I headed for respect,
I pickt the wrong field.
Applause was numerous but my orders were sealed:
at forty nearly when I took them out
I gave a joyless shout.
370
Henry saw with Tolstoyan clarity
his muffled purpose. He described the folds—
not a symbol in the place.
Naked the man came forth in his mask, to be.
Illnesses from encephalitis to colds
shook his depths & his surface.
When he dressed up & up, his costumes varied
with the southeast wind, but he remained aware.
Awareness was most of what he had.
The terrible chagrin to which he was married—
derelict Henry’s siege mentality—
stability, I will stay
in my monastery until my death
& the fate my actions have so hardly earned.
The horizon is all cloud.
Leaves on leaves on leaves of books I’ve turned
and I know nothing, Henry said aloud,
with his ultimate breath.
371
Henry’s Guilt
Sluggish, depressed, & with no mail to cheer,
he lies in Ireland’s rains bogged down, aware
of definite mental pain.
He hasn’t a friend for a thousand miles to the west
and only two in London, he counted & guessed:
ladies he might see again.
He has an interview to give in London
but the ladies have never married, frolicsomes
as long ago they were,
must he impute to him their spinsterhood
& further groan, as for the ones he stood
up & married fair?
Connection with Henry seemed to be an acre in Hell,
he crossed himself with horror. Doubtless a bell
ought to’ve been hung on Henry
to warn a-many lovely ladies off
before they had too much, which was enough,
and set their calves to flee.
372
O yes I wish her well. Let her come on
to Henry’s regions, with her mortal wound.
In so far as repair
is possible, we’ll lie her in the sun
forever, with to protect her a great hound,
so that she lies in peace there.
Until her lover comes: let him be good
quietly to her, and her blocked faith restore
in the mountains & the roar
of the grand sea of tumbling pebbles: could
anyone anywhere ask more?
Her patience is exemplary.
Cold & golden lay the high heroine
in a wilderness of bears. Let one man in.
One is enough.
Fish for the master, who will do you well,
rely not on the stormy citadel—
it’s a matter of love.
373
My eyes with which I see so easily
will become closed. My friendly heart will stop.
I won’t sit up.
Nose me, soon you won’t like it—ee—
worse than a pesthouse; and my thought all gone
& the vanish of the sun.
The vanish of the moon, which Henry loved
on charming nights when Henry young was moved
by delicate ladies
with ripped-off panties, mouths open to kiss.
They say the coffin closes without a sound
& is lowered underground!
what now about the adorable Little Twiss
& his fair lady,
will they set up a tumult in his praise
will assistant professors become associates
by working on his works?
374
Drum Henry out, called some. Others called No,
he did a deed once, damn to chastise him so;
the regiment can bear him.
—He tore the precincts down, cried the vicious first.
Learned & stealthy he attacked & cursed
our whole art of arms, holy, dim.
Worse still, he won praise overseas by this,
affording himself his own rules. Well, we hiss
& close our eyes at his freaks.
—You got enemies, Mr Bones. I ‘low
a-many will seek your skin & your parts below.
—I have sat here for weeks
and years. There was a time when I almost poisoned my cook.
Unamuno wrote in the Visitors’ Book
‘a humble man & a tramp’.
No challenges have come. Only the jackals howl
and Henry is fierce in blackness as an owl
on a field-mouse at the edge of my camp.
375
His Helplessness
I know a young lady’s high-piled ashen hair
and she is miserable, threatened a thoroughfare
for pants in their desire
fondless: she drinks too dear, & feels put down,
‘no one is friendly to me’ she scribbles here,
of all them griefs the crown
having been her lay by her father agèd ten
from which she grew up slowly into the world of men
who headed ha for her.
She put her soul in jeopardy with pills
a week ago, she writes—Henry would offer,
only it’s thousands of miles,
help to the delicate lady far in her strait,
counsel she needs, needs one to pace her fate.
I cannot spot a hole,
& I look with my heart, in her darkness over there:
dark shroud the clouds on her disordered soul
whose last letter flew like a prayer.
376
Christmas again, when you’re supposed to be happiest.
The tree’s decorated, the baby’s agog with joy
& Santa is a white-thatched boy
down our main small chimney with his best.
I hope he makes, we had to have it swept
after one fierce day when flames leapt.
We must live alone; he did; it deepens.
Falling & burning soot is not pleasing:
we thought we’d lose the house.
Pride power loneliness, each in its season,
brought Henry up to three marriages
as up to Penn Station came Christian Gauss
there to drop dead, surround & alone
(Charmed swam the hero of the Hellespont)
as Gaudi on the street in Barcellona.
The fair lose more, having them more to lose
& the good & the geniuses.
Spent dangles of his life in colleges.
Then he limpt down the stairs & left the house
377
Father Hopkins, teaching elementary Greek
whilst his mind climbed the clouds, also died here.
O faith in all he lost.
Swift wandered mad through his rooms & could not speak.
A milkman sane died, the one one, I fear.
His name was gone almost.
Hopkins’s credits, while the Holy Ghost
rooted for Hopkins, hit the Milky Way.
This is a ghost town.
It’s Xmas. Henry, can you reach the post?
Yeats did not die here—died in France, they say,
brought back by a warship & put down.
Joyce died overseas also but Hopkins died here:
where did they plant him, after the last exam?
To his own lovely land
did they rush him back, out of this hole unclear,
barbaric & green, or did they growl ‘God’s damn’
the lousy Jesuit, canned.
378
The beating of a horse fouled Nietszche’s avatar,
thereafter never said he one sane word,
Henry is not like that
but the fear.
They’re treading on toes notoriously tender.
The sudden sun sprang out
I gave the woman & her child ten shillings,
I can’t bear beggars at my door, and I
cannot bear at my door
the miserable, accusing me, and sore
back to my own country would I go
transparent, through the sky.
From fearful heart into an ice-cold pool,
Texas Falls in Vermont: delicious tremor.
Let’s have that again.
No, that will not return. Henry, the Lord of beauty,
is cashing in his problems
The violent winds in my gardens front & back
have driven away my birds
379
To the edge of Europe, the eighteenth edge,
the ancient edge, Henry sailed full of thought
and rich with high-wrought designs,
for a tranquil mind & to fulfil a pledge
he gave himself to end a labour, sought
but now his mind not finds
conformable itself to that forever
or any more of the stretch of Henry’s years.
Strange & new outlines
blur the old project. Soon they dissever
the pen & the heart, the old heart with its fears
& the daughter for which it pines.
Fresh toils the lightning over the Liffey, wild
and the avenues, like Paris’s, are rain
and Henry is here for a while
of many months, along with the squalls of a child,
thirty years later. I will not come again
or not come with this style.
380
From the French Hospital in New York, 901
Wordsworth, thou form almost divine, cried Henry,
‘the egotistical sublime’ said Keats,
oh ho, you lovely man!
make from the rafters some mere sign to me
whether when after this raving heart which beats
& which to beat began
Long so years since stops I may (ah) expect
a fresh version of living or if I stop
wholly.
Oblongs attend my convalescence, wreckt
and now again, by many full propt up,
not irreversible Henry.
Punctured Henry wondered would he die
forever, all his fine body forever lost
and his very useful mind?
Hopeless & violent the man will lie,
on decades’ questing, whose crazed hopes have crossed
to wind up here blind.
381
Cave-man Henry grumbled to his spouse
‘It’s cold in here. I’d rather have a house.
A house would be better,’
The bear-robe did them fairly well, but still
they certainly might fall ill.
I’m writing Mr Antelope a letter.
Leslie we lost all down the pure rock-face
& that was terrifying. Junior tried a trip in space
& ever since then he’ll stutter.
I woke our wiseman over an awful dream:
vividest his shrew-spouse: Scream.
I’m writing Mr Antelope a letter.
And with great good luck I’ll say a little more.
I am frightened by the waves upon the shore,
& seldom steal there, wetter
with the wild rain but safe, & back to the cave.
What he rendered forward too he forgave.
I’m writing Mr Antelope a letter.
382
At Henry’s bier let some thing fall out well:
enter there none who somewhat has to sell,
the music ancient & gradual,
the voices solemn but the grief subdued,
no hairy jokes but everybody’s mood
subdued, subdued,
until the Dancer comes, in a short short dress
hair black & long & loose, dark dark glasses,
uptilted face,
pallor & strangeness, the music changes
to ‘Give!’ & ‘Ow!’ and how! the music changes,
she kicks a backward limb
on tiptoe, pirouettes, & she is free
to the knocking music, sails, dips, & suddenly
returns to the terrible gay
occasion hopeless & mad, she weaves, it’s hell,
she flings to her head a leg, bobs, all is well,
she dances Henry away.
383
It brightens with power, when the dawn begins.
My court emerges. Up its shutters throws
my kiosk.
So cigarettes are here, and many sins
are purged by a dreamless night. I pick my nose.
All men have made mistakes.
All men have made mistakes: that includes You.
August in Athens, at the end of the labour.
Come kiss me.
I saw your fault before you showed it me,
the tall Anglaise, unmarried, 29.
So erect, so fine.
Grant her a husband, bête Apollo, swiftly.
She was not born for sacrifice, I think.
But she was born.
My baby’s all hunched up, in sleep. Poseidon,
ruined on Sounion, cares, in the hard cold wind,
who gave hell to Odysseus.
384
The marker slants, flowerless, day’s almost done,
I stand above my father’s grave with rage,
often, often before
I’ve made this awful pilgrimage to one
who cannot visit me, who tore his page
out: I come back for more,
I spit upon this dreadful banker’s grave
who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn
O ho alas alas
When will indifference come, I moan & rave
I’d like to scrabble till I got right down
away down under the grass
and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he’s taking it, which he sought so hard
we’ll tear apart
the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start.
385
My daughter’s heavier. Light leaves are flying.
Everywhere in enormous numbers turkeys will be dying
and other birds, all their wings.
They never greatly flew. Did they wish to?
I should know. Off away somewhere once I knew
such things.
Or good Ralph Hodgson back then did, or does.
The man is dead whom Eliot praised. My praise
follows and flows too late.
Fall is grievy, brisk. Tears behind the eyes
almost fall. Fall comes to us as a prize
to rouse us toward our fate.
My house is made of wood and it’s made well,
unlike us. My house is older than Henry;
that’s fairly old.
If there were a middle ground between things and the soul
or if the sky resembled more the sea,
I wouldn’t have to scold
my
heavy daughter.
Books by John Berryman
HOMAGE TO MISTRESS BRADSTREET
77 DREAM SONGS
SHORT POEMS (including The Dispossessed, His Thought Made Pockets, and Formal Elegy)
BERRYMAN’S SONNETS
STEPHEN CRANE
THE ARTS OF READING (with Ralph Ross & Allen Tate)
HIS TOY, HIS DREAM, HIS REST. Copyright © 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968 by John Berryman.
All rights reserved.
For information, address Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
eISBN 9781466879560
First eBook edition: July 2014