Berryman’s Sonnets

by Berryman, John

  ‘I want to take you for my lover’ just

  You vowed when on the way I met you: must

  Then that be all (Do) the shorn time we share?

  [ 43 ]

  You should be gone in winter, that Nature mourn

  With me your anarch separation, call-

  ing warmth all with you: as more poetical

  Than to be left biting the dog-days, lorn

  Alone when all else burgeons, brides are born,

  Children yet (some) begotten, every wall

  Clasped by its vine here . . crony alcohol

  Comfort as random as the unicorn.

  Listen, for poets are feigned to lie, and I

  For you a liar am a thousand times,

  Scars of these months blazon like a decree:

  I would have you—a liner pulls the sky—

  Trust when I mumble me. Than gin-&-limes

  You are cooler, darling, O come back to me.

  [ 44 ]

  Bell to sore knees vestigial crowds, let crush

  One another nations sottish and a-prowl,

  Talon the Norway rat to a barn owl

  At wind-soft midnight; split the sleepy hush

  With sirens; card-hells create; from a tower push

  The frantic hesitator; strike a rowel

  To a sad nag; probe, while they whiten & howl,

  With rubber gloves the prisoners’ genial slush;

  Enact our hammer time; only from time

  Twitch while the wind works my beloved and me

  Once with indulgent tongs for a little free,—

  Days, deer-fleet years, to be a paradigm

  For runaways and the régime’s exiles.

  . . The wind lifts, soon, the cold wind reconciles.

  [ 45 ]

  Boy twenty-one, in Donne, shied like a blow,—

  His prose, from poems’ seductive dynamite,—

  I read ‘The adulterer waits for the twilight . .

  The twilight comes, and serves his turn.’ (Not so:

  Midnight or dawn.) I stuttered frightened ‘No,

  Nóne could decline, crookt, ghastly, from the sight

  Of elected love and love’s delicious rite

  Upon the livid stranger Loves forego.’

  . . I am this strange thing I despised; you are.

  To become ourselves we are these wayward things.

  And the lies at noon, months’ tremblings, who foresaw?

  And I did not foresee fraud of the Law

  The scarecrow restraining like a man, its rings

  Blank . . my love’s eyes familiar as a scar!

  [ 46 ]

  Are we? You murmur ‘not’. What of the night

  Attack on the dark road we could not contain,

  Twice I slid to you sudden as the stain

  Joy bloods the wanderer at the water’s sight,

  And back, but you writhed on me . . as I write

  I tremble . . trust me not to keep on sane

  Until you whisper ‘Come to me again’

  Unless you whisper soon. O come we soon

  Together dark and sack each other outright,

  Doomed cities loose and thirsty as a dune . .

  Lovers we are, whom now the on-tide licks.

  Our fast of famed sleep stirs, darling, diurnal,—

  Hurry! till we, beginning our eternal

  Junket on the winds, wake like a ton of Styx.

  [ 47 ]

  How far upon these songs with my strict wrist

  Hard to bear down, who knows? None is to read

  But you: so gently . . but then truth’s to heed,

  The sole word, near or far, shot in the mist.

  Double I sing, I must, your utraquist,

  Crumpling a syntax at a sudden need,

  Stridor of English softening to plead

  O to you plainly lest you more resist.

  ‘Arthur lay then at Caerlon upon Usk . .’

  I see, and all that story swims back . . red

  Satin over rushes . . Mother’s voice at dusk.

  So I comb times and men to cram you rare:

  ‘Faire looketh Ceres with her yellow Haire’—

  Fairer you far O here lie filteréd.

  [ 48 ]

  I’ve met your friend at last, your violent friend,

  Laughter out of a hard life; and she out,

  Treating in talk one door really as shut

  That should be shut, gashes will hardly mend.

  ‘Here is Katrina’ at the other end

  Of telephones . . ‘Heck, I feel wonderful! . .’

  And so do I when I am with her, but

  I would she knew she lashed me where I bend.

  And so do I when I am with her, only

  Her ‘they’ and ‘harmony’ harry me lone and wild.

  . . How she loves you! and then to disarrange,

  Powerful chemist, all the years she’s filed

  With stubborn work, for the law! . . she means to change.

  So do I mean,—less (when I rise up) lonely.

  [ 49 ]

  One note, a daisy, and a photograph,

  To slake this siege of weeks without you, all.

  Your dawn-eyed envoy, welcome as Seconal,

  To call you faithful . . now this cenotaph,

  A shabby mummy flower. Note I keep safe,

  Nothing, on a ration slip a social scrawl—

  Not that it didn’t forth some pages call

  Of my analysis, one grim paragraph.

  The snapshot then—your eyes down, your hair bound:

  Your power leashed, but too your blaze is dim . .

  By the sea, thinking, long before we met;

  Akimbo from your nape, what petrels round

  (Out of the print) your unsuspicious slim

  Dear figure, warning ‘Dream of him

  now you not know whom you will not forget.’

  [ 50 ]

  They come too thick, hail-hard, and all beside

  Batter, necessities of my nights and days,

  My proper labour that my storm betrays

  Weekly lamented, weakly flung aside;

  What in the musical wind to work but glide

  Among the wind, willing my eyes should daze

  Fast on her image, for an exhaustless phrase,

  While themes throng, the rapt world one & hers & wide.

  They crowd on, crowning what I perforce complain

  Remorseful in my journal of, and lest

  Thick they fall thin, I beg the calm belongs,—

  Traditional meditation. But when my rein

  Fails most, still I race feeble to protest

  These two months . . decades of excited songs.

  [ 51 ]

  A tongue there is wags, down in the dark wood O:

  Trust it not. It trills malice among friends,

  Irrelevant squibs and lies, to its own ends

  Or to no ends, simply because it would O.

  To us, us most I hear, it prinks no good O;

  Has its idea, Jamesian; apprehends

  Truth non-aviarian; meddles, and ‘defends’

  Honour free . . that such a bill so wily should O!

  Who to my hand all year flew to be fed

  Makes up his doubts to dart at us . . Ah well,

  Did you see the green of that catalpa tree?—

  A certain jackal will lose half its head

  For cheek, our keek, our hairy philomel.—

  How can you tell?—A little bird told me.

  [ 52 ]

  A sullen brook hardly would satisfy

  The Winter-traveller slumps near, Stony Brook;

  Prattle of brooks it scorns, only in some crook

  Fetches again and now a muddy sigh

  Reaches me here.—A liner rocks the sky,

  I shudder beneath the trees. I brought a book,

  Shut on my brown knee. Once I rise and look

  Under the bridge-arch. The third day o
f July.

  Close, going back, I pass (still as a mouse)

  The fatuous stranger in the stone strong home

  Now you and my friend your husband are away.

  And I must gnaw there somewhy. Double day:

  In the end I race by cocky as a comb,

  Adust . . Da ist meiner Liebstens Haus.

  [ 53 ]

  Some sketch sweat’ out, unwilling swift & crude,

  A hundred more like bats in swelter-day

  A-lunge about my office, I’m away

  Downstairs for coffee, and to rest, and brood.

  . . The mots fly, and the flies mope on the food

  Where all-age adolescents swig and bray,

  An ice-cream-soda jag, the booths are gay . .

  The ass-eyes after me unlid, protrude.

  And I have fled antcrazy to my task

  In the hotbox at the top of Upper Wyne

  To work their children music! as ice cubes

  Pleasing, colder keeping, more than they ask,

  As worthy of them—not of you . . No sign . .

  Ermite-amateur in the midst of the boobs.

  [ 54 ]

  It was the sky all day I grew to and saw.

  I cycled southeast through the empty towns,

  Flags hanging out, between the summer grains,

  Meeting mainly the azure minions of our law.

  Near our fake lake an artificial pool

  Was full of men and women; all the rest,

  Shore for the Fourth. I crookt two roses. Most

  I studied the sky’s involuntary rule.

  I followed a cloud and finally I caught it,

  Springing my ribbon down the world of green . .

  Shadow to shadow, under tropical day . .

  Flat country, slow, alone. So in my pocket

  Your snapshot nightmares where (cloth, flesh between)

  My heart was, before I gave it away.

  [ 55 ]

  When I recall I could believe you’d go

  I start. I can’t believe you will come back.

  Months on to Monday, and then Monday’s rack

  Uncertain up the sky unseen winds blow

  Bringing what weather I cannot foreknow.

  Still I see better in my almanac

  Your coming, than in the columns white & black

  My going later. All our plans outgrow

  My local eyes, locked where somehow we draw

  Somewhat together, wince to a single goad,

  Each other steady . . steadily closer . . keep.

  Closer: against the departures of our law

  Let’s Dido-like ‘forge causes of abode’ . .

  Whom the sliding stars wheedle as one to sleep.

  [ 56 ]

  Sunderings and luxations, luxe, and grief-

  unending exile from the original spouse,

  Dog-fights! one bites intimate as a louse

  The lousy other, Love the twitching leaf

  Wide to the weather, hangover-long, jag-brief,

  Nulliparous intensities, or as mouse

  To cats the child to broken parents, house

  Sold, books divided . . divorce as a relief . .

  We discussed, drinking, one sad afternoon

  In a Connecticut house in cloudy June,

  Thinking, whoever was mentioned, still of others.

  I thought of you,—come we too to this vile

  Loose fagend? earlier still loves so defile? . .

  Could our incredible marriage . . like all others’ . . ?

  [ 57 ]

  Our love conducted as in heavy rain

  Develops hair and lowers its head: the lash

  And weight of rain breed, like the soundless slosh

  Divers make round a wrack, régime, domain

  Invisible, to us inured invisible stain

  Of all our process; also lightning flash

  Limns us audacious and furtive, whom slow crash

  On crash jolt like the mud- and storm-blind Wain.

  If the rain ceased and the unlikely sun

  Shone out! . . whom our stars shake, could we emerge

  Trustful and clear into the common rank,—

  So long deceiving?—Days when Dathan sank

  Quick to the pit not past, darling, we verge

  Daily O there: have strange changes begun?

  [ 58 ]

  Sensible, coarse, and moral; in decent brown;

  Its money doling to an orphanage;

  Sober . . well-spirited but sober; sage

  Plain nourishing life nor you nor I could down

  I doubt, our blinkers lost, blood like a clown

  Dancing upon a one-night hot-foot stage,

  Brains in a high wind, high brains, the next page

  Trembling,—the water’s fine, come in and drown.

  Since the corruption of the working classes

  I am speaking of the Eighteenth Century: kisses

  Opening on betrothals, love like a vise.

  Where shawm and flute flutter the twilight, where

  Conjugal, toothless, has a booth at the Fair,

  The Reno brothels boom, suddenly we writhe.

  [ 59 ]

  Loves are the summer’s. Summer like a bee

  Sucks our best off, thigh-brushes, and is gone.

  The yellow pollen upon the white winds blown

  Settles. I feel the summer draining me,

  I lean back breathless in an agony

  Of charming loss I suffer without moan,

  Without my love, or with my love alone.

  She left me in the Spring, or I say wé

  Left before there we bloomed our secret garden!

  The ghosts of breezes widowy small paths wander,

  A fruitless bird pipes its surprising sorrow.

  When will she, she come back? . . against whom I harden

  My effortless ghost in vain, who moved asunder

  Flowers at the come of summer beautiful and narrow.

  [ 60 ]

  Today is it? Is it today? I shudder

  For nothing in my chair, and suddenly yawn.

  Today I suddenly believe. Since dawn

  When I got up, my muscles like a rudder

  Strain crosswise from this work. I rise and mutter

  Something, and hum, pace, and sit down again

  Hard. A butterfly in my shoulder then

  Stops and aches. My stomach swings like a shutter.

  As the undergrounds piston a force of air

  Before their crash into the station, you

  Are felt before your coming, and the platforms shake.

  So light, so small, so far still, to impair

  Action and peace so . . risks we take make true

  Maybe our safeties . . come for our risk’s sake.

  [ 61 ]

  Languid the songs I wish I willed . . I try . .

  Smooth songs untroubled like a silver spoon

  To pour your creamy beauty back, warm croon

  Blind, soft . . but I have something in my eye,

  I see by fits, see what there, rapid and sly,

  Difficult, so that it will be off soon,

  I’d better fix it! frantic as a loon,

  Smarting, world-churned, some convulsed song I cry.

  Well . . (also I plead, I have something in mind,

  My bobsled need, the need for me you’ll find

  If you look deeper: study our winter-scene) . .

  Thinking is well, but worse still to be caught

  The wholly beautiful just beyond thought,—

  Small trees in mist far down an endless green!

  [ 62 ]

  Tyranny of your car—so much resembles

  Beachwagons all, all with officious hope

  Conscript my silly eyes—offers a trope

  For your grand sway upon these months my shambles:

  Your cleaver now to other women’s brambles

  I’ll not contrast—no, all of you have
scope,

  Teeth breasts tongues thighs eyes hair: as rope to rope

  You point to point compare, and the subject trembles.

  What makes yóu then this ominous wide blade

  I’d run from O unless I bleat to die?

  Nothing: you are not: woman blonde, called Lise.

  It is I lope to be your sheep, to wade

  Thick in my cordial blood, to howl and sigh

  As I decide . . if I could credit this.

  [ 63 ]

  Here too you came and sat a time once, drinking.

  I could have cut their throats to be alone.

  Yet all the hour I slumped here like a stone

  My heart smiled, I smiled while my heart was sinking.

  Happier than I seemed for their hoodwinking,

  My smile was under . . over . . so was the moan

  Arcane I kept out of the ‘master’ tone

  Native to me I adopted . . my rabid thinking.

  Juggler and cull! and places, words, call up

  Inscrutable disturbance bound to you

  Partout! partout some crowning or some crime;

  As Julian spending a nickel, Wid a dime,

  Mazes of instant silence must pursue,—

  Obsession’s hypocrites, time’s, their own dupe.

  [ 64 ]

  The dew is drying fast, a last drop glistens

  White on a damaged leaf not far from me.

  A pine-cone calmed here in a red-brown sea

  Collects its straying forces now and listens:

  A veery calls; south, a slow whistle loosens

  My lone control. The flat sun finally

  Flaws through the evergreen grove, and can be he—

  If Lise comes—our renewed love lights and christens.

  Tarry today? . . weeks the abandoned knoll

  And I have waited. The needles are soft . . feel.

  The village bell, or the college, tells me seven.

  Much longer not sustains—will it again?—

  Castaway time I scrabble tooth and nail,

  I crush a cigarette black, and go down.

  [ 65 ]