The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems

by John Berryman

  I have no idea whether we live again.

  It doesn’t seem likely

  from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view

  but certainly all things are possible to you,

  and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter

  & to Paul

  as I believe I sit in this blue chair.

  Only that may have been a special case

  to establish their initiatory faith.

  Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement.

  May I stand until death forever at attention

  for any your least instruction or enlightenment.

  I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight &

  beauty.

  2

  Holy, as I suppose I dare to call you

  without pretending to know anything about you

  but infinite capacity everywhere & always

  & in particular certain goodness to me.

  Yours is the crumpling, to my sister-in-law terrifying thunder,

  yours the candelabra buds sticky in Spring,

  Christ’s mercy,

  the gloomy wisdom of godless Freud:

  yours the lost souls in ill-attended wards,

  those agonized thro’ the world

  at this instant of time, all evil men,

  Belsen, Omaha Beach,—

  incomprehensible to man your ways.

  May be the Devil after all exists.

  ‘I don’t try to reconcile anything’ said the poet at eighty,

  ‘This is a damned strange world.’

  Man is ruining the pleasant earth & man.

  What at last, my Lord, will you allow?

  Postpone till after my children’s deaths your doom

  if it be thy ineffable, inevitable will.

  I say ‘Thy kingdom come’, it means nothing to me.

  Hast Thou prepared astonishments for man?

  One sudden Coming? Many so believe.

  So not, without knowing anything, do I.

  3

  Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me

  against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me

  to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain

  my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting.

  Forsake me not when my wild hours come;

  grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams;

  achieve in me patience till the thing be done,

  a careful view of my achievement come.

  Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder.

  When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey.

  Empty my heart toward Thee.

  Let me pace without fear the common path of death.

  Cross am I sometimes with my little daughter:

  fill her eyes with tears. Forgive me, Lord.

  Unite my various soul,

  sole watchman of the wide & single stars.

  4

  If I say Thy name, art Thou there? It may be so.

  Thou art not absent-minded, as I am.

  I am so much so I had to give up driving.

  You attend, I feel, to the matters of man.

  Across the ages certain blessings swarm,

  horrors accumulate, the best men fail:

  Socrates, Lincoln, Christ mysterious.

  Who can search Thee out?

  except Isaiah & Pascal, who saw.

  I dare not ask that vision, though a piece of it

  at last in crisis was vouchsafèd me.

  I altered then for good, to become yours.

  Caretaker! take care, for we run in straits.

  Daily, by night, we walk naked to storm,

  some threat of wholesale loss, to ruinous fear.

  Gift us with long cloaks & adrenalin.

  Who haunt the avenues of Angkor Wat

  recalling all that prayer, that glory dispersed,

  haunt me at the corner of Fifth & Hennepin.

  Shield & fresh fountain! Manifester! Even mine.

  5

  Holy, & holy. The damned are said to say

  ‘We never thought we would come into this place.’

  I’m fairly clear, my Friend, there’s no such place

  ordained for inappropriate & evil man.

  Surely they fall dull, & forget. We too,

  the more or less just, I feel fall asleep

  dreamless forever while the worlds hurl out.

  Rest may be your ultimate gift.

  Rest or transfiguration! come & come

  whenever Thou wilt. My daughter & my son

  fend will without me, when my work is done

  in Your opinion.

  Strengthen my widow, let her dream on me

  thro’ tranquil hours less & down to less.

  Abrupt elsewhere her heart, I sharply hope.

  I leave her in wise Hands.

  6

  Under new management, Your Majesty:

  Thine. I have solo’d mine since childhood, since

  my father’s suicide when I was twelve

  blew out my most bright candle faith, and look at me.

  I served at Mass six dawns a week from five,

  adoring Father Boniface & you,

  memorizing the Latin he explained.

  Mostly we worked alone. One or two women.

  Then my poor father frantic. Confusions & afflictions

  followed my days. Wives left me.

  Bankrupt I closed my doors. You pierced the roof

  twice & again. Finally you opened my eyes.

  My double nature fused in that point of time

  three weeks ago day before yesterday.

  Now, brooding thro’ a history of the early Church,

  I identify with everybody, even the heresiarchs.

  7

  After a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean,

  Justin Martyr studied the words of the Saviour,

  finding them short, precise, terrible, & full of refreshment.

  I am tickled to learn this.

  Let one day desolate Sherry, fair, thin, tall,

  at 29 today her life the Sahara Desert,

  who has never once enjoyed a significant relation,

  so find His lightning words.

  8

  A PRAYER FOR THE SELF

  Who am I worthless that You spent such pains

  and take may pains again?

  I do not understand; but I believe.

  Jonquils respond with wit to the teasing breeze.

  Induct me down my secrets. Stiffen this heart

  to stand their horrifying cries, O cushion

  the first the second shocks, will to a halt

  in mid-air there demons who would be at me.

  May fade before, sweet morning on sweet morning,

  I wake my dreams, my fan-mail go astray,

  and do me little goods I have not thought of,

  ingenious & beneficial Father.

  Ease in their passing my beloved friends,

  all others too I have cared for in a travelling life,

  anyone anywhere indeed. Lift up

  sober toward truth a scared self-estimate.

  9

  Surprise me on some ordinary day

  with a blessing gratuitous. Even I’ve done good

  beyond their expectations. What count we then

  upon Your bounty?

  Interminable: an old theologian

  asserts that even to say You exist is misleading.

  Uh-huh. I buy that Second-century fellow.

  I press his withered glorifying hand.

  You certainly do not as I exist,

  impersonating as well the meteorite

  & flaring in your sun your waterfall

  or blind in caves pallid fishes.

  Bear in mind me, Who have forgotten nothing,

  & Who continues. I may not foreknow

  & fail much to remember. You sustain

  imperial des
uetudes, at the kerb a widow.

  10

  Fearful I peer upon the mountain path

  where once Your shadow passed, Limner of the clouds

  up their phantastic guesses. I am afraid,

  I never until now confessed.

  I fell back in love with you, Father, for two reasons:

  You were good to me, & a delicious author,

  rational & passionate. Come on me again,

  as twice you came to Azarias & Misael.

  President of the brethren, our mild assemblies

  inspire, & bother the priest not to be dull;

  keep us week-long in order; love my children,

  my mother far & ill, far brother, my spouse.

  Oil all my turbulence as at Thy dictation

  I sweat out my wayward works.

  Father Hopkins said the only true literary critic is Christ.

  Let me lie down exhausted, content with that.

  11

  Germanicus leapt upon the wild lion in Smyrna,

  wishing to pass quickly from a lawless life.

  The crowd shook the stadium.

  The proconsul marvelled.

  ‘Eighty & six years have I been his servant,

  and he has done me no harm.

  How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?’

  Polycarp, John’s pupil, facing the fire.

  Make too me acceptable at the end of time

  in my degree, which then Thou wilt award.

  Cancer, senility, mania,

  I pray I may be ready with my witness.

  FROM

  Delusions, Etc.

  (1972)

  Opus Dei

  (a layman’s winter mockup, wherein moreover

  the Offices are not within one day said

  but thro’ their hours at intervals

  over many weeks—such being the World)

  Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick,

  and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into

  the fire, and oft into the water.

  And he did evil, because he prepared not

  his heart to seek the Lord.

  LAUDS

  Let us rejoice on our cots, for His nocturnal miracles

  antique outside the Local Group & within it

  & within our hearts in it, and for quotidian miracles

  parsecs-off yielding to the Hale reflector.

  Oh He is potent in the corners. Men

  with Him are potent: quasars we intuit,

  and sequent to sufficient discipline

  we perceive this glow keeping His winter out.

  My marvellous black new brim-rolled felt is both stuffy & raffish,

  I hit my summit with it, in firelight.

  Maybe I only got a Yuletide tie

  (increasing sixty) & some writing-paper

  but ha (haha) I’ve bought myself a hat!

  Plus-strokes from position zero! Its feathers sprout.

  Thank you, Your Benevolence!

  permissive, smiling on our silliness You forged.

  MATINS

  Thou hard. I will be blunt: Like widening

  blossoms again glad toward Your soothe of sun

  & solar drawing forth, I find meself

  little this bitter morning, Lord, tonight.

  Less were you tranquil to me in my dark

  just now than tyrannous. O some bore down

  sore with enticements—One abandoned me—

  half I swelled up toward—till I crash awake.

  However, lo, across what wilderness

  in vincible ignorance past forty years

  lost to (as now I see) Your sorrowing

  I strayed abhorrent, blazing with my Self.

  I thought I was in private with the Devil

  hounding me upon Daddy’s cowardice

  (trustless in stir the freeze: ‘Do your own time’).

  Intertangled all—choking, groping bodies.

  ‘Behold, thou art taken in thy mischief,

  because thou art a bloody man’ with horror

  loud down from Heaven did I not then hear,

  but sudden’ was received,—appointed even

  poor scotographer, far here from Court,

  humming over goodnatured Handel’s Te Deum.

  I waxed, upon surrender, strenuous

  ah almost able service to devise.

  I am like your sun, Dear, in a state of shear—

  parts of my surface are continually slipping past others,

  not You, not You. O I may, even, wave

  in crisis like a skew Wolf-Rayet star.

  Seas and hills, the high lakes, Superior,

  accomplish your blue or emerald donations—

  manifest too your soft forbearance, hard

  & flint for fierce man hardly to take in.

  I take that in. Yes. Just now. I read that.

  Hop foot to foot, hurl the white pillows about,

  jubilant brothers: He is our overlord,

  holding up yet with crimson flags the Sun

  whom He’ll embark soon mounting fluent day!

  PRIME

  Occludes wild dawn. Up thro’ green ragged clouds

  one sun is tearing, beset alders sway

  weary under swollen sudden drops

  and February winds shudder our doors,

  Lord, as thou knowest. What fits me today

  which work I can? I’ve to poor minimum

  pared my commitments; still I’m sure to err

  grievous & frequent before Evensong

  and both I long toward & abhor that coming

  Yet if You and I make a majority

  (as old Claudel encouraged) what sharp law

  can pass this morning?—upon which, I take heart.

  Also: ‘The specific gravity of iron

  is one and one-half times the size of Switzerland.’

  Zany enlivens. People, pipe with pipes:

  the least of us is back on contract, even

  unto myself succeeding in sunrise

  all over again!

  All customary blessings,

  anathemas of the date (post-Lupercal,

  and sure The Baby was my valentine),

  I’m not Your beaver, here disabled, still

  it is an honour, where some have achieved,

  to limp behind along, humming, & keen

  again upon what blue trumps, hazy, vainless glory.

  In Alexandria, O Saint Julian

  gouty, chair-borne, displayed then on a camel

  thorough the insufferable city, and burned.

  In other places, many other holy

  bishops, confessors, and martyrs. Thanks be to God.

  INTERSTITIAL OFFICE

  Bitter upon conviction

  (even of the seven women jurors

  several wept) I will not kneel just now,

  Father. I know I must

  but being black & galled for these young men,

  sick with their savage Judge

  (‘we felt we had no alternative,

  since all their evidence was ordered stricken’)—

  deep fatigue.

  Conducting his own defence: ‘men do pass laws

  that usurp God’s power …

  I hope you’ll try in your own way to speak peace.

  God guide you.’ Grim the prosecutor:

  ‘He’s trying to weasel his way out of it.’

  Draft records here would have gone up in fire.

  Peasant ladies & poupies there went up go up in fire.

  Who sat thro’ all three trials tells me the juror in blue

  looked inconsolably sad, and hid her eyes,

  when one propped up on his table a little hand-lettered sign

  WE LOVE YOU.

  The judge is called P N.

  This is of record. Where slept then Your lightning?

  Loafed Your torque.

  Well. Help us all! Yes—yes—I kneel.

  TERCE
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br />   Oh half as fearful for the yawning day

  where full the Enemy’s paratus and

  I clearly may

  wholly from prime time fail, as yet from yesterday

  with good heart grateful having gone no more

  (under what gentle tempting You knew I bore)

  than what occurred astray,

  I almost at a loss now genuflect and pray:

  Twice, thrice each day five weeks at ‘as we forgive

  those who trespass against us’ I have thought

  ah his envenomed & most insolent missive

  and I have done it!—and I damn him still

  odd times & unawares catch myself at it:

  I’m not a good man, I won’t ever be,

  there’s no health in here. You expect too much.

  This pseudo-monk is all but at despair.

  My blustering & whining & ill will

  versus His will—Forgive my insolence,

  since when I was a fervent child to You

  and Father Boniface each 5 a.m.

  But this world that was not. Lavender & oval,

  lilac, dissolve into one’s saying hurriedly

  ‘In sex my husband is brutal, beating, dirty, and drunk.’

  Has this become Thy will, Thou Reconciler?

  I seem to hear Retreat blast thro’ bleared air

  back to an unassailable redoubt,

  even old Nile-sounds, where ‘tears’ & ‘men’ sound the same

  and ‘not to be’ & ‘be complete’ are one.

  Ugh. What the hell quail I perplexed about?

  Christ Jesus. Gethsemane & Calvary

  & the Emmaus road, hardly propose

  (someone was saying) most of us are lost.

  SEXT

  High noon has me pitchblack, so in hope out,

  slipping thro’ stasis, my heart skeps a beat

  actuellement,

  reflecting on the subtler menace of decline.

  Who mentioned in his middle age ‘Great Death

  wars in us living which will have us all’

  caused choreographers to tinker maps

  pointing a new domestic capital

  and put before Self-Preservation ‘1)’.

  We do not know, deep now the dire age on,

  if it’s so, or mere a nightmare of one dark one,

  Mani’s by no means ultimate disciple.

  I personally call it: outmoded biology,

  of even mutation ignorant,