His Toy, His Dream, His Rest

by John Berryman

  so many years ago,

  did I read your lesson right? did I see through

  your phases to the real? your heaven, your hell

  did I enquire properly into?

  For years then I forgot you, I put you down,

  ingratitude is the necessary curse

  of making things new:

  I brought my family to see me through,

  I brought my homage & my soft remorse,

  I brought a book or two

  only, including in the end your last

  strange poems made under the shadow of death

  Your high figures float

  again across my mind and all your past

  fills my walled garden with your honey breath

  wherein I move, a mote.

  313

  The Irish sunshine is lovely but a Belfast man

  last night made a pass at my wife: Henry, who had passed out,

  was horrified

  to hear this news when he woke. The Irish sunshine

  is lovely as it comes & goes. The country is full of con-men

  as well as the lovely good.

  Saints throng these shores, & ancient practices

  continue in the dolmens, ruined castles

  are standard.

  The whole place is ghostly: no wonder Yeats believed in fairies

  & personal survival. A trim suburban villa

  also is haunted, by me.

  Heaven made this place, also, assisted by men,

  great men & weird. I see their shades move past

  in full daylight.

  The holy saints make the trees’ tops shiver,

  in the all-enclosing wind. And will love last

  further than tonight?

  314

  Penniless, ill, abroad, Henry lay skew

  to Henry’s American fate, which was to be well,

  have money in the bank

  & be at home. He can’t think what to do

  under this cluster of misfortune & hell,

  he gave a last wave & sank

  back on his rented pillow, sore at heart,

  amazed. It’s time for cables to come to the rescue

  but cables do not come.

  He could have done with just a certain sum

  of what was due him: plus the pain, there’s smart

  & puzzlement too.

  Pity his vigil, far away, done for

  almost, & choiceless. The fickle Irish sky

  shines down for a change,

  stopping short of his pillow. His thought tore.

  Were there any other gods he could defy,

  he wondered, or re-arrange?

  315

  Behind me twice her necessary knight

  she comes like one of Spenser’s ladies on

  on a white palfrey

  and it is cold & full dark in the valley,

  though I haven’t seen a dragon for days, & faint moonlight

  gives my horse footing till dawn.

  My lady is all in green, for innocence

  I am in black, a terror to my foes

  who are numerous & strong.

  I haven’t lost a battle yet but I am tense

  for the first losing. I wipe blood from my nose

  and raise up my voice in song.

  Hard lies the road behind, hard that ahead

  but we are armed & armoured & we trust

  entirely one another.

  We have beaten down the foulest of them, lust,

  and we pace on in peace, like sister & brother,

  doing that to which we were bred.

  316

  Blow upon blow, his fire-breath hurt me sore,

  I upped my broad sword & it hurt him more,

  without his talons at a loss

  & dragons are stupid: I wheeled around to the back of him

  my charger swift and then I trimmed him

  tail-less.

  Offering dragons quarter is no good,

  they re-grow all their parts & come on again,

  they have to be killed.

  I set my lance & took him as I would,

  in the fiery head, he crumpled like a man,

  and one prophecy was fulfilled:

  that thrice for Lady Valerie I would suffer

  but not be wax from like a base-born duffer,

  no no, Sir Henry would win.

  until a day that was not prophesied,

  having restored her lands. My love & pride

  fixed me like a safety-pin.

  317

  My mother threw a tantrum on a high terrace

  hurling down water-bombs on my brother & me,

  none of which landed?

  after a panic scene in a restaurant

  & in the street: I had picked out for her a peach sweet

  instead of one with a Catholic name.

  Amongst a-many terrible bright scenes,

  in the submarine’s sick-bay a fire began

  which we all fought in the aisle,

  pillowcases exploded into flame, & fiends

  swept the length of the great ship of man

  cleaning out the good & the vile.

  Henry with joy lay down for his next bout of rest,

  in happy expectation of the next

  assault on his divided soul.

  Does the validity of the dream-life suppose a Maker?

  If so what a careless monster he must be, whole,

  taking the claws with the purr.

  318

  Happy & idle, songless Henry swung

  next spring, seeing his methodical toils fordone:

  congratulate him.

  Ha ha, money, money, money, rung

  by rung, swaying in the seastorm, without sun,

  eyeless in the spray & grim

  he counts the anxious months to his arriving:

  toils without surcease: wicked nights: ill dreams

  wherein Valerie not to his side

  (considering all the conditions) streams

  and all his friends deserted from his striving

  save two, skilled & wide

  & wise: for them alone he sacked his brain

  & for Miss Carver, who was ruth itself

  & who will visit here

  come spring: my wife will make her right as rain

  and Henry’s work, on the Atlantic Shelf

  will begin to disappear.

  319

  Having escaped, except in his dreams, many dooms

  and it does not seem likely now that his old phantasy,

  of having his left leg sawed off

  at the knee, without anesthetic, will come off—

  he can see & hear, convalescent Henry:

  his house has many rooms

  whereof from one he’ll cable his doctor if

  they are about, after a final game of pingpong,

  to take off his left leg

  & flame the stump—that goes with the story—

  & bandage it, & shriek a cripple Song,

  & buy himself a peg:

  peg-leg, peg-leg, his golden voice did aria

  the better for his change, he could play pingpong

  sitting down

  & there was one leg no more could happen to—

  I thrust a knife into it, it doesn’t hurt,

  as they took it away downtown.

  320

  Steps almost unfamiliar toward his door

  deep in night came. ‘I am a fierce old man’

  Henry called out.

  Was it his mother? Might it be a whore

  out of his youth? Some foe—cold his blood ran—

  forgotten in the crowd

  female he’d known through hairy years come back

  from Themiscyra come to Pussy-cat land

  in helmets & miniskirts—

  see them all down the Mall! But this attack

  was singular: he waited: a soft hiss

  bad to his ears, & hurts,

 
borne through the open transom to his wincing bed:

  it was not her, nor her, nor her: was then it She

  cold in steel & sworded

  & unforgiving: Pentheselia dread!

  His nerves hear the lock turn. ‘I am—’ cried Henry,

  waking sweated & sordid.

  321

  O land of Connolly & Pearse, what have

  ever you done to deserve these tragic masters?

  You come & go,

  free: nothing happens. Nelson’s Pillar blows

  but the busses still go there: nothing is changed,

  for all these disasters O

  We fought our freedom out a long while ago

  I can’t see that it matters, we can’t help you

  land of ruined abbeys,

  discredited Saints & brainless senators,

  roofless castles, enemies of Joyce & Swift,

  enemies of Synge,

  enemies of Yeats & O’Casey, hold your foul ground

  your filthy cousins will come around to you,

  barely able to read,

  friends of Patrick Kavanagh’s & Austin Clarke’s

  those masters who can both read & write,

  in the high Irish style.

  322

  I gave my love a cookie, as I said,

  which she ate. ‘Apu-Apu’ was my dream.

  My love was all in green,

  as I said. ‘Unam Sanctam’ was my other dream,

  in a chapel where none of my family could take degrees,

  only start them, & mother was dead

  I knelt at a shallow altar high on the right

  where she had prayed. The carpet was blue-green.

  The scholarly frame was French,

  Goguel & Guignebert & the Ecole des Hautes Etudes:

  I took my mother’s hand, which would never hold a degree,

  and shook it, behind her back.

  I gave my love a cookie, it was her fate

  to be involved with Henry Pussycat,

  I feel only pity for her.

  I’ll spare her all I can, in Ireland & elsewhere,

  It must have been that cookie which she ate,

  never take cookies from cats.

  323

  Churchill was ever-active & crammed with glee,

  Henry was morbid, inactive, & a child to Angst,

  there the difference ends.

  They both drank, heavily.

  But that is not the reason why this witty

  & sportive dinosaur is a hero to Henry & amongst

  Henry’s friends, given a different turn of luck,

  would valiantly have figured. Both wrote things down,

  both thought on their feet,

  and both spent the bulk of their long lives out of favour:

  no bed of roses cushioned any frown

  disabling their achievement:

  Malice was their appointed air, & with defeat

  they were fully familiar: in the end the grand triumph

  came down like lightning on one

  matchless, & now that’s over let’s see what will happen to the second

  still in full tide, with a style stern wicked & sweet

  and O much, so much to be done.

  324

  An Elegy for W.C.W., the lovely man

  Henry in Ireland to Bill underground:

  Rest well, who worked so hard, who made a good sound

  constantly, for so many years:

  your high-jinks delighted the continents & our ears:

  you had so many girls your life was a triumph

  and you loved your one wife.

  At dawn you rose & wrote—the books poured forth—

  you delivered infinite babies, in one great birth—

  and your generosity

  to juniors made you deeply loved, deeply:

  if envy was a Henry trademark, he would envy you,

  especially the being through.

  Too many journeys lie for him ahead,

  too many galleys & page-proofs to be read,

  he would like to lie down

  in your sweet silence, to whom was not denied

  the mysterious late excellence which is the crown

  of our trials & our last bride.

  325

  Control it now, it can’t do any good,

  your grief for your great friend, killed on the day

  he & his wife & three

  were moving to a larger house across the street.

  Our dead frisk us, & later they get better at it,

  our wits are stung astray

  till all that we can do is groan, bereft:

  tears fail: and then we reckon what is left,

  not what was lost.

  I notice at this point a divided soul,

  headed both fore & aft and guess which soul

  will swamp & lose:

  that hoping forward, brisk & vivid one

  of which will nothing ever be heard again.

  Advance into the past!

  Henry made lists of his surviving friends

  & of the vanished on their uncanny errands

  and took a deep breath.

  326

  My right foot being colder than my left knee,

  I put it on it: my right arm is under the pillow

  which is vertical,

  transverse never: my right cheek’s happy on it, stale

  sweat developing over hours makes me changey,

  I shift straight over on my back, see,

  & my thoughts are different & more straightforward

  than on my side, much less my seldom stomach:

  half-dreams cease:

  O yes, if Henry wants a little peace

  in the vigils long he rights onto his back,

  he can’t sleep but the horde

  of terrors fresh from Henry’s shaming past

  can’t get him either, on his back. Years fly

  & yet this programme is sound:

  fast on your side lie, pal, with one knee fast

  under your chin, the horrid waking night, why,

  it beats underground

  (or I reserve my opinion).

  327

  Freud was some wrong about dreams, or almost all;

  besides his insights grand, he thought that dreams were a transcript

  of childhood & the day before,

  censored of course: a transcript:

  even his lesser insight were misunderstood & became a bore

  except for the knowing & troubled by the Fall.

  Grand Jewish ruler, custodian of the past,

  our paedegogue to whip us into truth,

  I sees your long story,

  tyrannical & triumphant all-wise at last

  you wholly failed to take into account youth

  & had no interest in your glory.

  I tell you, Sir, you have enlightened but

  you have misled us: a dream is a panorama

  of the whole mental life,

  I took one once to forty-three structures, that

  accounted in each for each word: I did not yell ‘mama’

  nor did I take it out on my wife.

  328

  —I write with my stomach: Henry ruefully;

  and my stomach is improved, I write with my purse

  and long sums have come

  from foreign places. I write here by the sea

  & the gulls go over my gardens. I write terse

  & the wastebaskets fill like home.

  I write what I design, groaned mortal Henry.

  Happiness was ours too but did not stay,

  neither misery may.

  The moneys & the tummy grew to a gale

  wafting him onward where he would not ail

  but invent endlessly.

  ‘I helped to wind the clock’ cried The O’Rahilly,

  ‘I come to hear it strike’—so in at the death

  Henry required to be.

  He b
rought his ancient brain, his faultless breath,

  his liver & his lights, his grand energy,

  & flourisht like a sycamore tree.

  329

  Henry on LSD was Henry indeed

  pounds shillings pence, made a mountaining landscape

  His foes were Parker green

  All his relatives danced in shameless air

  Coke came from his nose The Vatican was a grape

  the baby’s animals tear

  Blue flew the parents through the humid dusk,

  they can’t arrange for the yellow collection of shells

  whimper near the city centre

  He told a dirty story, angry & brusque,

  He ate black-eyed peas since there was nothing else

  He looked everywhere for his mentor

  His mentor found was black & ripe, a floater,

  we’ll thread the eyes, argued the oldest one,

  & bury it at sea

  To get rid of the shroud put on Full the motor,

  just a little hump, sink it in the rising sun,

  abominable & impenetrable Henry.

  330

  The Twiss is a tidy bundle, chirped joyous Henry,

  all other dreams forgotten. Acres of joy

  spring when she strode the bike

  behind her mother, all so near the sea

  where never she has been. A little boy

  is what is Daddy’s mike,

  that which he seeks & fears ha ha. He’s supposed to fear,

  since everyone else does, but actually he can’t make it.

  He broadcasts freely.

  Cantons of candy for the Little Twiss here.

  She won a prize on board, one at the church,

  at the supermarket

  & in the hotel she was extravagantly admired,

  I wonder it doesn’t turn her silly head,

  the little baby.

  Universal clouds, an Irish sky,

  said what would be her fate, tears & a child

  and a father old & wild.

  331

  This is the third. What have I more to say

  except that I hope that in my dying hour

  nobody will be ashamed of me:

  May I not be scared then of that final void

  into which I lapse, leaving all my power

  & memory behind me.

  There’s a lot of hair in Ireland, much of it red.