The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems

by John Berryman

  so long as I happen.

  In the rain of pain & departure, still

  Love has no body and presides the sun,

  and elfs from silence melody. I run.

  Hover, utter, still,

  a sourcing whom my lost candle like the firefly loves.

  NOTES

  STANZAS

  1–4

  The poem is about the woman but this exordium is spoken by the poet, his voice modulating in stanza 4, line 8 [4.8] into hers.

  1.1

  He was not Governor until after her death.

  1.5

  Sylvester (the translator of Du Bartas) and Quarles, her favourite poets; unfortunately.

  5.4, 5

  Many details are from quotations in Helen Campbell’s biography, the Winthrop papers, narratives, town histories.

  8.4ff.

  Scriptural passages are sometimes ones she used herself, as this in her Meditation liii.

  11.8

  that one: the Old One.

  12.5–13.2

  The poet interrupts.

  18.7

  Her first child was not born until about 1633.

  22.6

  chopping: disputing, snapping, haggling; axing.

  23.1

  fere: his friend Death.

  24.1

  Her irony of 22.8 intensifies.

  24.2

  rakes: inclines, as a mast; bows.

  25.3

  One might say: He is enabled to speak, at last, in the fortune of an echo of her—and when she is loneliest (her former spiritual adviser having deserted Anne Hutchinson, and this her closest friend banished), as if she had summoned him; and only thus, perhaps, is she enabled to hear him. This second section of the poem is a dialogue, his voice however ceasing well before it ends at 39.4, and hers continuing for the whole third part, until the coda (54–57).

  29.1–4

  Cf. Isa. 1:5.

  29.5, 6

  After a Klee.

  33.1

  Cf., on Byzantine icons, Frederick Rolfe (‘Baron Corvo’): ‘Who ever dreams of praying (with expectation of response) for the prayer of a Tintoretto or a Titian, or a Bellini, or a Botticelli? But who can refrain from crying “O Mother!” to these unruffleable wan dolls in indigo on gold?’ (quoted from The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole by Graham Greene in The Lost Childhood).

  33.5, 6

  ‘Délires des grandes profondeurs,’ described by Cousteau and others; a euphoria, sometimes fatal, in which the hallucinated diver offers passing fish his line, helmet, anything.

  35.3, 4

  As of cliffhangers, movie serials wherein each week’s episode ends with a train bearing down on the strapped heroine or with the hero dangling over an abyss into which Indians above him peer with satisfaction before they hatchet the rope. rescue: forcible recovery (by the owner) of good distrained.

  37.7, 8

  After an engraving somewhere in Fuchs’s collections. Bray, above (36.4), puns.

  39.5

  The stanza is unsettled, like 24, by a middle line, signaling a broad transition.

  42.8

  brutish: her epithet for London in a kindly passage about the Great Fire.

  46.1, 2

  Arminians, rebels against the doctrine of unconditional election. Her husband alone opposed the law condemning Quakers to death.

  46.3, 4

  Matthew 3:12.

  46.5, 6

  Rheumatic fever, after a celebrated French description.

  48.2ff.

  Space … outside: delirium.

  51.5

  Cf. Zech. 14:20.

  51.6

  Wandering pacemaker: a disease of the heart, here the heart itself.

  52.4

  Seaborn Cotton, John’s eldest son; Bradstreet being then magistrate.

  52.5, 6

  Dropsical, a complication of the last three years. Line 7 she actually said.

  55.4

  thrift: the plant, also called Our Lady’s cushion.

  55.8

  wet brain: edema.

  56.5, 6

  Cf. G. R. Levy, The Gate of Horn, p. 5.

  FROM

  His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt

  (1958)

  They Have

  A thing O say a sixteenth of an inch

  long, with whiskers

  & wings it doesn’t use, & many legs,

  has all this while been wandering in a tiny space

  on the black wood table by my burning chair.

  I see it has a feeler of some length

  it puts out before it.

  That must be how it was following the circuit

  of the bottom of my wine-glass, vertical: Mâcon: I thought

  it smelt & wanted some but couldn’t get hold.

  Now here’s another thing, on my paper, a fluff

  of legs, and I blow: my brothers & sisters go away.

  But here he’s back, & got between the pad

  & padback, where I save him and

  shift him to my blue shirt, where he is.

  The other little one’s gone somewhere else.

  They have things easy.

  The Poet’s Final Instructions

  Dog-tired, suisired, will now my body down

  near Cedar Avenue in Minneap,

  when my crime comes. I am blazing with hope.

  Do me glory, come the whole way across town.

  I couldn’t rest from hell just anywhere,

  in commonplaces. Choiring & strange my pall!

  I might not lie still in the waste of St Paul

  or buy D A D ’ S root beer; good signs I forgive.

  Drop here, with honour due, my trunk & brain

  among the passioning of my countrymen

  unable to read, rich, proud of their tags

  and proud of me. Assemble all my bags!

  Bury me in a hole, and give a cheer,

  near Cedar on Lake Street, where the used cars live.

  from The Black Book (iii)

  Lover & child, a little sing.

  From long-lockt cattle-cars who grope

  Who near a place of showers come

  Foul no more, whose murmuring

  Grows in a hiss of gas will clear them home:

  Away from & toward me: a little soap,

  Disrobing, Achtung! in a dirty hope,

  They shuffle with their haircuts in to die.

  Lift them an elegy, poor you and I,

  Fair & strengthless as seafoam

  Under a deserted sky.

  A Sympathy, A Welcome

  Feel for your bad fall how could I fail,

  poor Paul, who had it so good.

  I can offer you only: this world like a knife.

  Yet you’ll get to know your mother

  and humourless as you do look you will laugh

  and all the others

  will NOT be fierce to you, and loverhood

  will swing your soul like a broken bell

  deep in a forsaken wood, poor Paul,

  whose wild bad father loves you well.

  American Lights, Seen From Off Abroad

  Blue go up & blue go down

  to light the lights of Dollartown

  Nebuchadnezzar had it so good?

  wink the lights of Hollywood

  I never think, I have so many things,

  flash the lights of Palm Springs

  I worry like a madwoman over all the world,

  affirm the lights, all night, at State

  I have no plans, I mean well,

  swear the lights of Georgetown

  I have the blind staggers

  call the lights of Niagara

  We shall die in a palace

  shout the black lights of Dallas

  I couldn’t dare less, my favorite son,

  fritter the lights of Washington

  (I have a brave old So-and-so,

  chuckle the lights of Independence, Mo.)

  I c
ast a shadow, what I mean,

  blurt the lights of Abilene

  Both his sides are all the same

  glows his grin with all but shame

  ‘He can do nothing night & day,’

  wonder his lovers. So they say.

  ‘Basketball in outer space’

  sneers the White New Hampshire House

  I’ll have a smaller one, later, Mac,

  hope the strange lights of Cal Tech

  I love you one & all, hate shock,

  bleat the lights of Little Rock

  I cannot quite focus

  cry the lights of Las Vegas

  I am a maid of shots & pills,

  swivel the lights of Beverly Hills

  Proud & odd, you give me vertigo,

  fly the lights of San Francisco

  I am all satisfied love & chalk,

  mutter the great lights of New York

  I have lost your way

  say the white lights of Boston

  Here comes a scandal to blight you to bed.

  ‘Here comes a cropper.’ That’s what I said.

  Lévanto

  7 October 1957

  Mr. Pou & the Alphabet

  (1961)

  Mr. Pou & the Alphabet—which he do not like

  A is for awful, which things are;

  B is for bear them, well as we can.

  C is for can we? D is for dare:

  E is for each dares, being a man.

  (What does a man do? bears and dares;

  and how does a little boy fare? He fares.)

  F is for floor we stamp wif our foot,

  G is for grimy we getting from play,

  H is for Hell wherein they do put

  the bad guys, maybe. Oh, and I is for ‘Ay’

  (And this will puzzle the Little Pou,

  but his mommy can explain it. Do.)

  J is for Jackknife which later will come,

  when Poukie is bigger, K is for key.

  L is for Little Pou, M is for some

  men who have definite reason to be.

  And N is for now, the best time of all,

  And O is for ouch when it hurts—quite so.

  P is for Poukie, of Paul and piano,

  and Q is for quiet, while Mommy tells Paul.

  R is for rudiments Poukie now learn.

  S is for sea-horse, erect fish, weird,

  T is for Turks whom we take by the beard.

  U is for utter-don’t-know-where-to turn.

  V is for vowels the Pou is to learn.

  (So vivid splendid subjects hide ahead,

  the stars, the grasses, asses and wisemen, letters and the word.)

  W’s for why, which ask and ask;

  X is for Xmas, where I cannot be.

  Y is for Yes (do his Daddy love he?)

  Z is for zig-zag—a part of our task.

  (Straight’s better, but few can.

  My Xmas hope: boy head for man.)

  Formal Elegy

  (1964)

  Formal Elegy

  I

  A hurdle of water, and O these waters are cold

  (warm at outset) in the dirty end.

  Murder on murder on murder, where I stagger,

  whiten the good land where we have held out.

  These kills were not for loot,

  however Byzantium hovers in the mind:

  were matters of principle—that’s worst of all—

  & fear & crazed mercy.

  Ruby, with his mad claim

  he shot to spare the Lady’s testifying,

  probably is sincere.

  No doubt, in his still cell, his mind sits pure.

  II

  Yes, it looks like a wilderness—pacem appellant.

  Honour to Patrolman Tippit. Peace to the rifler’s widow.

  Seven, I believe, play fatherless.

  III

  Scuppered the yachts, the choppers, big cars, jets.

  Nobody goes anywhere,

  lengthened (days) into TV.

  I am four feet long, invisibly.

  What in the end will be left of us is a stare,

  underwater.

  If you want me to join you in confident prayer, let’s

  not.

  I sidled in & past, gazing upon it,

  the bier.

  IV

  Too Andean hopes, now angry shade.—

  I am an automobile. Into me climb

  many, and go their ways. Onto him climbed

  a-many and went his way.

  For a while we seemed to be having a holiday

  off from ourselves—ah, but the world is wigs,

  as sudden we came to feel

  and even hís splendid hair kept not wholly real

  fumbling & falsing in & out of the Bay of Pigs,

  the bad moment of this excellent man,

  suffered by me as a small car can.

  Faithful to course we stayed.

  V

  Some in their places are constrained to weep.

  Stunned, more, though.

  Black foam. A weaving snake. An invulnerable sleep.

  It doing have to come so.

  All at once, hurtless, in the tide of applause

  & expectation. I write from New York

  where except for a paraplegic exterminator—

  a gracious & sweet guy—

  nobody has done no work

  lately

  VI

  It’s odd perhaps that Dallas cannot after their crimes

  criminals protect or Presidents.

  Fat Dallas, a fit set.

  I would not perhaps have voted for him next time.

  Images of Mr Kennedy blue the air,

  who is little now, with no chance to grow great,

  but who have set his touch across the State,

  true-intended, strong

  VII

  My breath comes heavy, does my breath.

  I feel heavy about the President’s death.

  VIII

  I understand I hear I see I read

  schoolgirls in Dallas when the white word came

  or slammed, cheered in their thoughtful grades,

  brought-up to a loving tone.

  I do not sicken but somewhat with shame

  I shift my head an inch; who are my own.

  I have known a loving Texas woman in parades

  and she was boastful & treacherous.

  That boringest of words, whereas here I blush,

  ‘education’, peters to a nailing of us.

  IX

  An editor has asked me in my name

  what wish or prophecy I’d like to state

  for the new year. I am silent on these occasions

  steadily, having no love for a fool

  (which I keep being) but I break my rule:

  I do all-wish the bullets swim astray

  sent to the President, and that all around

  help, and his heart keep sound.

  I have a strange sense

  he’s about to be the best of men.

  Amen.

  X

  It’s quiet at Arlington. Rock Creek is quiet.

  My prīmers, with Mount Auburn. Everybody should

  have his sweet boneyards. Yet let the young not go,

  our apprentice King! Alas,

  muffled, he must. He seemed good:

  brainy in riot, daring, cool.

  So

  let us abandon the scene of disorder. Drop

  them shattered bodies into tranquil places,

  where moulder as you will. We compose our faces

  cold as the cresting waters; ready again.

  The waters break.

  All black & white together, stunned, survive

  the final insolence to the head of you;

  bow.

  Overwhelmed-un, live.

  A rifle fact is over, pistol facts

  almost entirely are too.

  The man of a wise face opened
it to speak:

  Let us continue.

  FROM

  Love & Fame

  (1970)

  Cadenza on Garnette

  ‘If I had said out passions as they were,’

  plain-saying Wordsworth confided down deep age,

  ‘the poems could never have been published.’

  Ha! a confrère.

  She set up a dazing clamour across this blood

  in one of Brooks Hall’s little visiting rooms.

  In blunt view of whoever might pass by

  we fondled each other’s wonders.

  One night she couldn’t come down, she had a cold,

  so I took away a talkative friend of hers,

  to squirrel together inklings as to Garnette,

  any, no matter what, she did, said, was.

  O it flowed fuller than the girl herself,

  I feasted on Louise.

  I all but fell in love with her instead,

  so rich with news.

  Allen long after, being taxed obscenely

  in a news-sheet of Spoleto, international town,

  complained to me next day: His aim was tell it all.

  Poets! . . Lovers & secrets!

  How did we break off, now I come to it,

  I puzzle. Did she date somebody else

  & I warred with that & she snapped ‘You don’t own me’

  or did the flare just little by little fall?

  so that I cut in & was cut in on,

  the travelling spotlights coloured, the orchestra gay,

  without emphasis finally,

  pressing each other’s hand as he took over.

  Freshman Blues

  My intense friend was tall & strongly made,

  almost too handsome—& he was afraid

  his penis was too small.

  We mooted it, we did everything but examine it

  whether in se or by comparison

  to the great red joy a pecker ought to be

  to pump a woman ragged. Only kid sisters,

  he muttered, want to somersault with me.

  Thought much I then on perforated daddy,

  daddy boxed in & let down with strong straps,