Doge followed Doge down down, the city floated.
Vassals drencht maps.
Fat popes & emperors to the high altar, hates
soothed into peace here. Nothing went unnoted
by the Patriarch perhaps
for a thousand years, when Henry struck his forehead
over his strange eyes & his monstrous beard
ah-ing ‘This is too much.’
Canal smell, the Byzantine beauty of the dead,
with lovers arm in arm by the basin, weird
to Henry as such.
Gulls chains voices bells: honey we’re home.
I don’t care whether they cremate Henry or not.
His labour of travel is done
He came upon some shore one time like foam
but had to set out again or rot
with his life on him like a ton.
Unlike this feverish voyaging where new facts turned up
hourly, monthly, among stale voyagers
mostly American
loud rich & rude & petty, whom God also will call to a stop
without the languages, bitches without their curs.
Rats across the Quai Voltaire run, can
frighten you honey at dusk or an Arab Street:
we knew that: Henry had the wit to be afraid
and so my dear love were you.
The ship bangs in. We relax in defeat,
stiffen to the new acquaintances to be made
& the sky over our graves is blue.
Henry under construction was Henry indeed:
gigantic cranes faltered under the load,
spark-showers from the welding played
with daylight, crew after crew
replaced each other like Kings, all done anew
Daily, to the horror of the gathering crowd
which gazed in a silence of awe or sobbed aloud.
The structure huge mounted apace. Some sang,
others in prayer knelt; when the western wing
was added, one vast sigh
arose & made its way into the earless sky.
Lifts were installed, many had their ashes hauled.
Parents in the throng looked down appalled,
In the end the mighty roof was hoisted on.
The event transpired throughout the city at dawn,
foot upon violent foot
converged to shining Henry in the risen sun,
question tormented the multitude one by one
to see to what use it would now be put.
Long (my dear) ago, when rosaries
based Henry’s vaulting thought, at seven & six,
Henry perceived in the sky
your form amidst his stars. He fought to please
you & God daily. Seldom wicked tricks
surfaced into his I.
Malice remained, in this man, moribund
unto this hour and even at this hour
it’s sleepy & can’t bother.
Let demons do. But evils other conned
Henry sufficiently to blot or sour
your forms & the form of Father.
I was the altar-boy he depended on
on freezing twilit mornings, after good dreams.
Since when my dreams have changed.
Could Father wrong occurred to Henry gone
fearful, grown. Out of the world of seems
our death has us estranged.
20/21 Feb 68 (second) 1:50 a.m.
With arms outflung the clock announced: Ten-twenty.
Dozens of demons sprang & preyed on Henry.
All on a heavy morning.
The baby was ill, the sky was dark, the I
was Id, somebody put the sky on like a lid,
somebody who is not returning.
Oh we’ll wait. After all, after all.
The Doubter & the rest. They rested all,
on the night of the crucifying.
Perhaps their dreams were something truly remarkable.
Perhaps their dreams had what to do with his dying—
but that was very lonely.
Haldol & Serax, phenobarbital,
Vivactil, by day; by deep night Tuinal
& Thorazine,
kept Henry going, like a natural man.
I’m waiting for them to work, as sometimes they can,
honey, in the bloodstream.
June 68
Good words & irreplaceable: serenade, schadenfreude,
angst & malheur, we need them, we bow to them:
what raving genius
in our past coined such wisdom? I cannot know.
Nor can you, my deep dear. You cannot know.
They were ineffable.
Who coined despair? I hope you never hear,
my lovely dear, of any such goddamned thing.
Set it up on a post
and ax the post down while the angels sing,
& bury the stenchful body loud & clear
with an appropriate toast.
Who made you up? That was a thin disguise:
the soul shows through. You are my honey dear.
Come, come & live with me.
I can deal with everything but your eyes
in tears—tears I invented & put there,
during our mystery.
24 June 68
I’m reading my book backward. It sounds odd.
It came twenty minutes ago. The hell with god.
A student just called up
about a grade earlier in the year.
The hell with students. And my mother (‘Mir’)
did the indexes to this book.
There’s madness in the book. And sanenesses,
he argued. Ha! It’s all a matter of
control (& so forth) of the subject.
The subject? Henry House & his troubles, yes
with his wife & mother & baby, yes
we’re now at the end, enough.
A human personality, that’s impossible.
The lines of nature & of will, that’s impossible.
I give the whole thing up.
Only there resides a living voice
which if we can make we make it out of choice
not giving the whole thing up.
Phase Four
I will begin by mentioning the word
‘Surrender’—that’s the 4th & final phase.
The word. What is the thing, well, must be known
in Heaven. ‘Acceptance’ is the phase before;
if after finite struggle, infinite aid,
ever you come there, friend,
remember backward me lost in defiance,
as I remember those admitting & complying.
We cannot tell the truth, it’s not in us.
That truth comes hard. O I am fighting it,
my Weapon One: I know I cannot win,
and half the war is lost, that’s to say won.
The rest is for the blessed. The rest is bells
at sundown off across a dozen lawns,
a lake, two strands of laurel, where they come
out of phase three mild toward the sacristy.
Epilogue
(1942)
Epilogue
He died in December. He must descend
Somewhere, vague and cold, the spirit and seal,
The gift descend, and all that insight fail
Somewhere. Imagination one’s one friend
Cannot see there. Both of us at the end.
Nouns, verbs do not exist for what I feel.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
INDEX OF TITLES
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank April Bernard, Henri Cole, Philip Coleman, Jonathan Galassi, David Godwin, John Haffenden, Michael Hofmann, Miranda Popkey, Charles Thornbury, and very especially Kate Donahue.
Index of First Lines
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s in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
A hurdle of water, and O these waters are cold
A is for awful, which things are;
(a layman’s winter mockup, wherein moreover
A thing O say a sixteenth of an inch
According to Thy will: That this day only
After a little I could not have told—
After a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean,
Although the relatives in the summer house
Amplitude,—voltage,—the one friend calls for the one,
‘and something that … that is theirs—no longer ours’
And the Americans put Pound in a cage
At twenty-five a man is on his way.
Aware to the dry throat of the wide hell in the world
Bitter upon conviction
Blue go up & blue go down
bulks where the barley blew, time out of mind
Canal smell. City that lies on the sea like a cork
Damned. Lost & damned. And I find I’m pregnant.
Dog-tired, suisired, will now my body down
Dream in a dream the heavy soul somewhere
Edgy, perhaps. Not on the point of bursting-forth,
Fearful I peer upon the mountain path
Feel for your bad fall how could I fail,
For all his vehemence & hydraulic opinions
Germanicus leapt upon the wild lion in Smyrna,
Good words & irreplaceable: serenade, schadenfreude,
Gulls chains voices bells: honey we’re home.
He died in December. He must descend
He was reading late, at Richard’s, down in Maine,
Henry under construction was Henry indeed:
Henry’s nocturnal habits were the terror of his women.
Here’s one who wants them hanged. A poor sick mind,
High noon has me pitchblack, so in hope out,
Holy, & holy. The damned are said to say
Holy, as I suppose I dare to call you,
Hospital racket, nurses’ iron smiles.
I don’t know what the hell happened all that summer.
I put those things there.—See them burn.
I remind myself at that time of Plato’s uterus—
I thought I’d say a thing to please myself
I told him: The time has come, I must be gone.
I will begin by mentioning the word
I would at this late hour as little as may be
‘If I had said out passions as they were,’
If I say Thy name, art Thou there? It may be so.
I’m reading my book backward. It sounds odd.
In my serpentine researches
It seems to be DARK all the time.
Let us rejoice on our cots, for His nocturnal miracles
Long (my dear) ago, when rosaries
Lover & child, a little sing.
Man with a tail heads eastward for the Fair.
Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,
My intense friend was tall & strongly made,
O a little lonely in Cambridge that first Fall
O when I grunted, over lines and her,
Occludes wild dawn. Up thro’ green ragged clouds
Oh half as fearful for the yawning day
On the night of the Belgian surrender the moon rose
Problem. I cannot come among Your saints,
(. . rabid or dog-dull.) Let me tell you how
Sick with the lightning lay my sister-in-law,
Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me,
Summoned from offices and homes, we came.
Surprise me on some ordinary day
The fireflies and the stars our only light,
The first signs of the death of the boom came in the summer,
The Governor your husband lived so long
The grey girl who had not been singing stopped,
The history of strangers in their dreams
The round and smooth, my body in my bath,
The sun rushed up the sky; the taxi flew;
The three men coming down the winter hill
The tree before my eyes bloomed into flame,
They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
This afternoon, discomfortable dead
Thou hard. I will be blunt: Like widening
Took my leave (last) five times before the end
Under new management, Your Majesty:
Vanity! hog-vanity, ape-lust
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
Who am I worthless that You spent such pains
With arms outflung the clock announced: Ten-twenty.
Your letter came.—Glutted the earth & cold
‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley’ and
Index of Titles
The index that appears in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
“A Poem for Bhain,”
“A Point of Age, Part I,”
“A Sympathy, A Welcome,”
“A Usual Prayer,”
“A Winter-Piece to a Friend Away,”
“American Lights, Seen From Off Abroad,”
“Cadenza on Garnette,”
“Canto Amor,”
“Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up,”
“Damned,”
“Desire Is a World by Night,”
“Despair,”
“Eleven Addresses to the Lord,”
“Epilogue,”
“Formal Elegy,”
“Freshman Blues,”
from “The Black Book (iii),”
“Henry by Night,”
“Henry’s Understanding,”
“Homage to Mistress Bradstreet,”
“‘How Do You Do, Dr Berryman, Sir?’,”
“Images of Elspeth,”
“In Memoriam (1914–1953),”
“King David Dances,”
“Message,”
“Mr. Pou & the Alphabet—which he do not like,”
“New Year’s Eve,”
“Olympus,”
“Opus Dei,”
“Lauds,”
“Matins,”
“Prime,”
“Interstitial Office,”
“Terce,”
“Sext,”
“Nones,”
“Vespers,”
“Compline,”
“Parting as Descent,”
“Phase Four,”
“Recovery,”
“Tampa Stomp,”
“The Animal Trainer (2),”
“The Ball Poem,”
“The Cage,”
“The Disciple,”
“The Dispossessed,”
“The Handshake, The Entrance,”
“The Hell Poem,”
“The Heroes,”
“The Lightning,”
“The Long Home,”
“The Minnesota and the Letter-Writers,”
“The Moon and the Night and the Men,”
“The Nervous Songs,”
“Young Woman’s Song,”
“The Song of the Demented Priest,”
“A Professor’s Song,”
“The Captain’s Song,”
“The Song of the Tortured Girl,”
“The Poet’s Final Instructions,”
“The Possessed,”
“The Spinning Heart,”
“The Traveller,”
“They Have,”
“Transit,”
“Two Organs,”
“Winter Landscape,”
“World-Telegram,”
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)
Berryman’s Sonnets (1967)
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)
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 © 2014 by Kathleen Berryman Donahue
Introduction and selection copyright © 2014 by Daniel Swift
All rights reserved
First edition, 2014
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 [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berryman, John, 1914–1972.
[Poems, Selections.]
The heart is strange: new selected poems / John Berryman; edited with an introduction by Daniel Swift. — First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-22108-9 (hardback)
I. Swift, Daniel, 1977– II. Title.
PS3503.E744A6 2014
811'.54—dc23
2014004039
www.fsgbooks.com
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eISBN 9780374713591
The Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems Page 12
