His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Note

  IV

  78. Op. posth. no. 1

  79. Op. posth. no. 2

  80. Op. posth. no. 3

  81. Op. posth. no. 4

  82. Op. posth. no. 5

  83. Op. posth. no. 6

  84. Op. posth. no. 7

  85. Op. posth. no. 8

  86. Op. posth. no. 9

  87. Op. posth. no. 10

  88. Op. posth. no. 11

  89. Op. posth. no. 12

  90. Op. posth. no. 13

  91. Op. posth. no. 14

  V

  92. Room 231: the forth week

  93. General Fatigue

  94. Ill lay he long

  95. The surly cop

  96. Under the table

  97. Henry of Donnybrook

  98. I met a junior

  99. Temples

  100. How this woman came

  101. A shallow lake

  102. The sunburnt terraces

  103. I consider a song

  104. Welcome, grinned Henry

  105. As a kid

  106. 28 July

  107. Three ’coons come at his garbage

  108. Sixteen below.

  109. She mentioned ‘worthless’

  110. It was the blue & plain ones.

  111. I miss him.

  112. My framework is broken

  113. or Amy Vladeck or Riva Freifeld

  114. Henry in trouble

  115. Her properties

  116. Through the forest, followed

  117. Disturbed, when Henry’s love

  118. He wondered: Do I love?

  119. Fresh-shaven, past months

  120. Foes I sniff

  121. Grief is fatiguing.

  122. He published his girl’s bottom

  123. Dapples my floor the eastern sun

  124. Behold I bring you tidings

  125. Bards freezing, naked

  126. A Thurn

  127. Again, his friend’s death

  128. A hemorrhage of his left ear

  129. Thin as a sheet

  130. When I saw my friend

  131. Come touch me baby

  132. A Small Dream

  133. As he grew famous

  134. Sick at 6

  135. I heard said

  136. Whíle his wife earned

  137. Many’s the dawn

  138. Combat Assignment

  139. Green grieves the Prince

  140. Henry is vanishing.

  141. One was down on the Mass.

  142. The animal moment, when

  143. —That’s enough of that

  144. My orderly tender

  145. Also I love him:

  VI

  146. These lovely motions of the air

  147. Henry’s mind grew blacker

  148. Glimmerings

  149. This world is gradually

  150. He had followers

  151. Bitter & bleary

  152. I bid you then

  153. I’m cross with god

  154. Flagrant his young male beauty

  155. I can’t get him out of my mind

  156. I give in.

  157. Ten Songs

  158. Being almost ready now

  159. Panic & shock, together.

  160. Halfway to death

  161. Draw on your resources.

  162. Vietnam

  163. Stomach & arm

  164. Three limbs

  165. An orange moon

  166. I have strained everything

  167. Henry’s Mail

  168. The Old Poor

  169. Books drugs

  170. —I can’t read any more

  171. Go, ill-sped book

  172. Your face broods from my table

  173. In mem: R. P. Blackmur

  174. Kyrie Eleison

  175. Old King Cole

  176. All that hair

  177. Am tame now.

  178. Above the lindens

  179. A terrible applause

  180. The Translator—I

  181. The Translator—II

  182. Buoyant, chockful of stories

  183. News of God

  184. Failed as a makar

  185. The drill was after

  186. There is a swivelly grace

  187. Them lady poets

  188. There is a kind of undetermined hair

  189. The soft small snow

  190. The doomed young envy the old

  191. The autumn breeze

  192. Love me love me

  193. Henry’s friend’s throat

  194. If all must hurt at once

  195. I stalk my mirror

  196. I see now all these deaths

  197. (I saw in my dream

  198. —I held all solid

  199. I dangle on the rungs

  200. I am interested & amazed

  201. Hung by a thread

  202. With shining strides

  203. Nothing!—

  204. Henry, weak at keyboard music

  205. Come & dance

  206. Come again closer

  207. —How are you?

  208. His mother wrote good news

  209. Henry lay cold & golden

  210. —Mr Blackmur, what are the holy cities

  211. Forgoing the Andes

  212. With relief to public action

  213. Wan shone my sun

  214. Which brandished goddess

  215. Took Henry tea down

  216. Scads a good eats

  217. Some remember

  218. Fortune gave him to know

  219. So long? Stevens

  220. —If we’re not Jews

  221. I poured myself out thro’ my tips.

  222. It was a difficult crime

  223. It’s wonderful the way

  224. Lonely in his great age

  225. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt

  226. Phantastic thunder

  227. Profoundly troubled

  228. The Father of the Mill

  229. They laid their hands on Henry

  230. There are voices, voices.

  231. Ode

  232. They work not well on all

  233. Cantatrice

  234. The Carpenter’s Son

  235. Tears Henry shed

  236. When Henry swung

  237. When in the flashlights’ flare

  238. Henry’s Programme for God

  239. Am I a bad man?

  240. Air with thought thick

  241. Father being the loneliest word

  242. About that ‘me’

  243. An undead morning.

  244. Calamity Jane lies very still

  245. A Wake-Song

  246. Flaps, on winter’s first day

  247. Henry walked

  248. Snowy of her breasts

  249. Bushes lay low.

  250. Sad sights.

  251. Walking, Flying—I

  252. Walking, Flying—II

  253. Walking, Flying—III

  254. Mrs Thomas, Mrs Harris

  255. My twin, the nameless one

  256. Henry rested

  257. The thunder & the flaw

  258. Scarlatti spurts his wit

  259. Does then
our rivalry

  260. Tides of dreadful creation

  261. Restless, as once in love

  262. The tenor of the line

  263. You couldn’t bear to grow old

  264. I always wanted

  265. I don’t know one damned butterfly

  266. Dinch me, dark God

  267. Can Louis die?

  268. Henry, absent on parade

  269. Acres of spirits

  270. This fellow keeps on

  271. Why then did he make

  272. The subject was her.

  273. Survive—exist—

  274. It’s lovely just here now

  275. July 11

  276. Henry’s Farewell—I

  277. Henry’s Farewell—II

  278. Henry’s Farewell—III

  VII

  279. Leaving behind

  280. Decision taken

  281. The Following Gulls

  282. Richard & Randall

  283. Shrouded the great stars

  284. The hand I shook

  285. Much petted Henry

  286. So Henry’s enemy’s lost

  287. A best word across a void

  288. In neighbourhoods

  289. It is, after all her!

  290. Why is Ireland

  291. Cold & golden

  292. The Irish sky is raining

  293. What gall had he in him

  294. I broke a mirror

  295. You dear you

  296. Of grace & fear

  297. Golden his mail came

  298. Henry in transition

  299. The Irish have

  300. Henry Comforted

  301. Shifted his mind

  302. Cold & golden … The forest tramped

  303. Three in Heaven I hope

  304. Maris & Valerie

  305. Like the sunburst

  306. The Danish priest has horns

  307. The Irish monk with horns

  308. An Instructions to Critics

  309. Fallen leaves & litter.

  310. His gift receded.

  311. Famisht Henry ate

  312. I have moved to Dublin

  313. The Irish sunshine is lovely but

  314. Penniless, ill, abroad

  315. Behind me twice

  316. Blow upon blow

  317. My mother threw a tantrum

  318. Happy & idle

  319. Having escaped

  320. Steps almost unfamiliar

  321. O land of Connolly & Pearse

  322. I gave my love a cookie

  323. Churchill was ever-active

  324. An Elegy for W. C. W., the lovely man

  325. Control it now

  326. My right foot being colder

  327. Freud was some wrong about dreams

  328. —I write with my stomach

  329. Henry on LSD

  330. The Twiss is a tidy bundle

  331. This is the third.

  332. Trunks & impedimenta.

  333. And now I’ve sent

  334. Thrums up from nowhere

  335. In his complex investigations

  336. Henry as a landlord

  337. The mind is incalculable

  338. According to the Annals

  339. A maze of drink said

  340. The secret is not praise.

  341. The Dialogue, aet. 51

  342. Fan-mail from foreign countries

  343. Another directory form to be corrected

  344. Herbert Park, Dublin

  345. Anarchic Henry

  346. Henry’s very rich American friends

  347. The day was dark.

  348. 700 years?

  349. The great Bosch in the Prado

  350. All the girls

  351. Animal Henry sat reading

  352. The Cabin

  353. These massacres of the superior peoples

  354. The only people in the world

  355. Slattery’s, in Ballsbridge

  356. With fried excitement

  357. Henry’s pride in his house

  358. The Gripe

  359. In sleep, of a heart attack

  360. The universe has gifted me

  361. The Armada Song

  362. And now I meet you

  363. I cast as feminine

  364. There is one book

  365. Henry, a foreigner

  366. Chilled in this Irish pub

  367. Henry’s Crisis

  368. At a gallop through his gates

  369. I threw myself out

  370. Henry saw

  371. Henry’s Guilt

  372. O yes I wish her well.

  373. My eyes

  374. Drum Henry out, called some.

  375. His Helplessness

  376. Christmas again

  377. Father Hopkins

  378. The beating of a horse

  379. To the edge of Europe

  380. From the French Hospital in New York, 901

  381. Cave-man Henry

  382. At Henry’s bier

  383. It brightens with power

  384. The marker slants

  385. My daughter’s heavier

  Books by John Berryman

  Copyright

  To Mark Van Doren, and to the sacred memory of Delmore Schwartz

  NO INTERESTING PROJECT CAN BE EMBARKED ON WITHOUT FEAR. I SHALL BE SCARED TO DEATH HALF THE TIME.

  Sir Francis Chichester in Sydney

  FOR MY PART I AM ALWAYS FRIGHTENED, AND VERY MUCH SO. I FEAR THE FUTURE OF ALL ENGAGEMENTS.

  Gordon in Khartoum

  I AM PICKT UP AND SORTED TO A PIP. MY IMAGINATION IS A MONASTERY AND I AM ITS MONK.

  Keats to Shelley

  HE WENT AWAY AND NEVER SAID GOODBYE.

  I COULD READ HIS LETTERS BUT I SURE CAN’T READ HIS MIND.

  I THOUGHT HE’S LOVIN ME BUT HE WAS LEAVIN ALL THE TIME.

  NOW I KNOW THAT MY TRUE LOVE WAS BLIND.

  Victoria Spivey?

  Note: THIS VOLUME, comprising Books IV, V, VI, VII, continues and concludes the poem, called The Dream Songs, begun in 77 Dream Songs. The poems in this volume were written over a period of eleven years.

  My most deep thanks are due to the Ingraham Merrill Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for generous help without which the poem would probably never have been finished, at least in its present form. My thanks are due also to the President and the Regents of the University of Minnesota, which awarded me a sabbatical leave at a critical moment in the composition. Acknowledgment is here made also to various editors who printed some of the Songs, especially to Mr Crook and Mr Hamilton of The Times Literary Supplement, which printed most of Book IV. British hospitality to foreign poetry, particularly American, makes a bright spot in a sickening century.

  Some of the Songs are dedicated to friends: Ellen Siegelman (92), Philip Siegelman (180–1), Dr. A. Boyd Thomes (184), Maris Thomes (239, 295), Robert Lowell (287), Adrienne Rich (294, 307, 362), Valerie Trueblood (286, 315), William Meredith (320), Howard Nemerov (335), Victoria Bay (344), Robert Giroux (364).

  It is idle to reply to critics, but some of the people who addressed themselves to the 77 Dream Songs went so desperately astray (one apologized about it in print, but who ever sees apologies?) that I permit myself one word. The poem then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American in early middle age sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second; he has a friend, never named, who addresses him as Mr Bones and variants thereof. Requiescant in pace.

  J.B.

  IV

  78

  Op. posth. no. 1

  Darkened his eye, his wild smile disappeared,

  inapprehensible his studies grew,

  nourished he less & less

  his subject body with good food
& rest,

  something bizarre about Henry, slowly sheared

  off, unlike you & you,

  smaller & smaller, till in question stood

  his eyeteeth and one block of memories

  These were enough for him

  implying commands from upstairs & from down,

  Walt’s ‘orbic flex,’ triads of Hegel would

  incorporate, if you please,

  into the know-how of the American bard

  embarrassed Henry heard himself a-being,

  and the younger Stephen Crane

  of a powerful memory, of pain,

  these stood the ancestors, relaxed & hard,

  whilst Henry’s parts were fleeing.

  79

  Op. posth. no. 2

  Whence flew the litter whereon he was laid?

  Of what heroic stuff was warlock Henry made?

  and questions of that sort

  perplexed the bulging cosmos, O in short

  was sandalwood in good supply when he

  flared out of history

  & the obituary in The New York Times

  into the world of generosity

  creating the air where are

  & can be, only, heroes? Statues & rhymes

  signal his fiery Passage, a mountainous sea,

  the occlusion of a star:

  anything afterward, of high lament,

  let too his giant faults appear, as sent

  together with his virtues down

  and let this day be his, throughout the town,

  region & cosmos, lest he freeze our blood

  with terrible returns.

  80

  Op. posth. no. 3

  It’s buried at a distance, on my insistence, buried.

  Weather’s severe there, which it will not mind.

  I miss it.

  O happies before & during & between the times it got married.

  I hate the love of leaving it behind,

  deteriorating & hopeless that.

  The great Uh climbed above me, far above me,

  doing the north face, or behind it. Does He love me?

  over, & flout.

  Goodness is bits of outer God. The house-guest

  (slimmed-down) with one eye open & one breast

  out.

  Slimmed-down from by-blow; adoptive-up; was white.

  A daughter of a friend. His soul is a sight.

  —Mr Bones, what’s all about?

  Girl have a little: what be wrong with that?

  Yóu free? —Down some many did descend

  from the abominable & semi-mortal Cat.

  81

  Op. posth. no. 4

  He loom’ so cagey he say ‘Leema beans’

  and measured his intake to the atmosphere

  of that fairly stable country.

  His ear hurt. Left. The rock-cliffs, a mite sheer