Well—but four worse!! . . all four, marvellous friends—
Some horse-shit here, eh?—You admitted it,
Come, you did once . . and we are friends, I say.—
‘La Cuchiani aima Tristan, mais . .’
(The biographer says) unscrupulous a bit,
Or utterly … There, of course, the resemblance ends.
[ 110 ]
‘Ring us up when you want to see us . .’ —‘Sure,’
Said Moses to the SS woman, smil-
ing hopeless Moses.—Put her whip and file
Away and walked away, strip-murderer,
A svelte Lise, whistling … Knowing, it’s all your
(Alas) initiation: you I can’t: while
We are relationless, ‘us’?—Hail, chat: cant, heil!—
Hypocrite-perfect! hoping I endure.
A winter-shore is forming in my eye,
The widest river: down to it we dash,
In love, but I am naked, and shake; so,
Uncoloured-thick-oil clad, you nod and cry
Let’s go!’ . . white fuzzless limbs you razor flash,
And I am to follow the way you go.
27 August
[ 111 ]
Christian to Try: “I am so coxed in it,
All I can do is pull, pull without shame,
Backwards,—on the coxswain fall the fiery blame,
I slump free and exhausted.”—“Stop a bit,”
Try studied his sloe gin, “if you must fit
A trope so, you must hope to quit the game”
Pursued my brown friend with the plausible name
“Before your heart enlarging mucks you. Minute
By minute you pull faster.”—But I too
Am named, though lost . . you learn God’s will, give in,
After, whatever, you sit on, you sit.
Try “Quit” said “and be free.” I freeze to you
And I am free now of the fire of this sin
I choose . . I lose, yes . . but then I submit!
[ 112 ]
I break my pace now for a sonic boom,
the future’s with & in us. I sit fired
but comes on strong with the fire fatigue: I’m tired.
‘I’d drive my car across the living-room
if I could get it inside the house.’ You loom
less, less than before when your voice choired
into my transept hear I now it, not expired
but half-dead with exhaustion, like Mr Bloom.
Dazzle, before I abandon you, my eyes,
my eyes which I need for journeys difficult
in which case it may be said that I survive you.
Your voice continues, with its lows & highs,
and I am a willing accomplice in the cult
and every word that I have gasped of you is true.
[ 113 ]
‘I didn’t see anyone else, I just saw Lise’
Anne Frank remorseful from the grave: ah well,
it was a vision of her mother in Hell,
a payment beforehand for rebellion’s seize,
whereby she grew up: springing from her knees
she saw her parents level. I ward your spell
away, and I try hard to look at you level
but that is quite unaccustomed to me, Lise.
Months I lookt up, entranced by you up there
like a Goya ceiling which will not come down,
in swirling clouds, until the end is here.
Tetélestai. We steamed in a freighter from Spain
& I will never see those frescoes again
nor need to, having memorized your cloudy gown.
[ 114 ]
You come blonde visiting through the black air
knocking on my hinged lawn-level window
and you will come for years, above, below,
& through to interrupt my study where
I’m sweating it out like asterisks: so there,—
you are the text, my work’s broken down so
I found, after my grandmother died, slow,
and I had flown far South to her funeral spare
but crowded with relations, I found her last
letter unopened, much less answered: shame
overcame me so far I paused & cried
in my underground study, for all the past
undone & never again to walk tall, lame
at the mercy of your presence to abide.
[ 115 ]
All we were going strong last night this time,
the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, an evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen—ecstasies—
among so much good we tamped down the crime.
The weather’s changing. This morning was cold,
as I made for the grove, without expectation,
some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,
to read her if she came. Presently the sun
yellowed the pines & my lady came not
in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.
ALSO BY JOHN BERRYMAN
POETRY
Poems (1942)
The Dispossessed (1948)
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956)
His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt (1958)
77 Dream Songs (1964)
Short Poems (1967)
Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Other Poems (1968)
His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968)
The Dream Songs (1969)
Love & Fame (1970)
Delusions, Etc. (1972)
Henry’s Fate & Other Poems, 1967–1972 (1977)
Collected Poems 1937–1971 (1989)
The Heart Is Strange (2014)
PROSE
Stephen Crane: A Critical Biography (1950)
The Arts of Reading (with Ralph Ross and Allen Tate) (1960)
Recovery (1973)
The Freedom of the Poet (1976)
Berryman’s Shakespeare (1999)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 1952, 1967 by John Berryman
Copyright renewed © 1995 by Kate Berryman
Introduction copyright © 2014 by April Bernard
All rights reserved
Published in 1967 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This paperback edition, 2014
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Paperback ISBN: 978-0-374-53454-7
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eISBN 9781466879621
First eBook Edition: September 2014
Berryman’s Sonnets Page 7
