John Berryman Read online

  That standing up and worst of animals?

  What will become of you in the pure light

  When all your enemies are gone, and gone

  The inexhaustible prospect of the night?

  —But the night is now the body of my fear,

  These animals are my distraction. Once

  Let me escape the smells and cages here,

  Once let me stand naked in the sun,

  All these performances will be forgotten.

  I shall concentrate in the sunlight there.

  Said the conservative Heart: Your animals

  Are occupation, food for you, your love

  And your immense responsibility;

  They are the travellers by which you live.

  (Without you they will pace and pine, or die.)

  —I reared them, tended them (I said) and still

  They plague me, they will not perform, they run

  Into forbidden corners, they fight, they steal.

  Better to live like an artist in the sun.

  —You are an animal trainer, Heart replied.

  Without your animals leaping at your side

  No sun will save you, nor this bloodless pride.

  —What must I do then? Must I stay and work

  With animals, and confront the night, in the circus?

  —You léarn from animals. You léarn in the dark.

  The Animal Trainer (2)

  I told him: The time has come, I must be gone.

  It is time to leave the circus and circus days,

  The admissions, the menagerie, the drums,

  Excitements of disappointment and praise.

  In a suburb of the spirit I shall seize

  The steady and exalted light of the sun

  And live there, out of the tension that decays,

  Until I become a man alone of noon.

  Heart said: Can you do without these animals?

  The looking, licking, smelling animals?

  The friendly fumbling beast? The listening one?

  The standing up and worst of animals?

  What will become of you in the pure light

  When all your enemies are gone, and gone

  The inexhaustible prospect of the night?

  —But the night is now the body of my fear,

  These animals are my distraction! Once

  Let me escape the smells and cages here,

  Once let me stand naked in the sun,

  All their performances will be forgotten.

  I shall concentrate in the sunlight there.

  Said the conservative Heart: These animals

  Are occupation, food for you, your love

  And your despair, responsibility:

  They are the travellers by which you live.

  Without you they will pace and pine, or die.

  —What soul-delighting tasks do they perform?

  They quarrel, snort, leap, lie down, their delight

  Merely a punctual meal and to be warm.

  Justify their existence in the night!

  —The animals are coupling, and they cry

  ‘The circus is, it is our mystery,

  It is a world of dark where animals die.’

  —Animals little and large, be still, be still:

  I’ll stay with you. Suburb and sun are pale.

  —Animals are your destruction, and your will.

  III

  1 September 1939

  The first, scattering rain on the Polish cities.

  That afternoon a man squat’ on the shore

  Tearing a square of shining cellophane.

  Some easily, some in evident torment tore,

  Some for a time resisted, and then burst.

  All this depended on fidelity . .

  One was blown out and borne off by the waters,

  The man was tortured by the sound of rain.

  Children were sent from London in the morning

  But not the sound of children reached his ear.

  He found a mangled feather by the lake,

  Lost in the destructive sand this year

  Like feathery independence, hope. His shadow

  Lay on the sand before him, under the lake

  As under the ruined library our learning.

  The children play in the waves until they break.

  The Bear crept under the Eagle’s wing and lay

  Snarling; the other animals showed fear,

  Europe darkened its cities. The man wept,

  Considering the light which had been there,

  The feathered gull against the twilight flying.

  As the little waves ate away the shore

  The cellophane, dismembered, blew away.

  The animals ran, the Eagle soared and dropt.

  Desire Is a World by Night

  The history of strangers in their dreams

  Being irresponsible, is fun for men,

  Whose sons are neither at the Front nor frame

  Humiliating weakness to keep at home

  Nor wince on principle, wearing mother grey,

  Honoured by radicals. When the mind is free

  The catechetical mind can mince and tear

  Contemptible vermin from a stranger’s hair

  And then sleep.

  In our parents’ dreams we see

  Vigour abutting on senility,

  Stiff blood, and weathered with the years, poor vane;

  Unfortunate but inescapable.

  Although this wind bullies the windowpane

  Are the children to be kept responsible

  For the world’s decay? Carefully we choose

  Our fathers, carefully we cut out those

  On whom to exert the politics of praise.

  Heard after dinner, in defenceless ease,

  The dreams of friends can puzzle, dazzle us

  With endless journeys through unfriendly snow,

  Malevolent faces that appear and frown

  Where nothing was expected, the sudden stain

  On spotless window-ledges; these we take

  Chuckling, but take them with us when we go,

  To study in secret, late, brooding, looking

  For trails and parallels. We have a stake

  In this particular region, and we look

  Excitedly for situations that we know.

  —The disinterested man has gone abroad;

  Winter is on the by-way where he rode

  Erect and alone, summery years ago.

  When we dream, paraphrase, analysis

  Exhaust the crannies of the night. We stare,

  Fresh sweat upon our foreheads, as they fade:

  The melancholy and terror of avenues

  Where long no single man has moved, but play

  Under the arc-lights gangs of the grey dead

  Running directionless. That bright blank place

  Advances with us into fearful day,

  Heady and insuppressible. Call in friends,

  They grin and carry it carefully away,—

  The fathers can’t be trusted,—strangers wear

  Their strengths, and visor. Last, authority,

  The Listener borrow from an English grave

  To solve our hatred and our bitterness . .

  The foul and absurd to solace or dismay.

  All this will never appear; we will not say;

  Let the evidence be buried in a cave

  Off the main road. If anyone could see

  The white scalp of that passionate will and those

  Sullen desires, he would stumble, dumb,

  Retreat into the time from which he came

  Counting upon his fingers and his toes.

  Farewell to Miles

  We are to tell one man tonight good-bye.

  Therefore in little glasses Scotch, therefore

  Inane talk on the chaise longue by the door,

  Therefore the loud man, the man small and shy

  Who squats, the hostess as
she has a nut

  Laughing like ancestor. Hard, hard to find

  In thirteen bodies one appropriate mind,

  It is hard to find a knife that we can cut.

  The dog is wandering among the men

  And wander may: who knows where who will be,

  Under what master, in what company,

  When what we hope for has not come again

  For the last time? Schedules, nerves will crack

  In the distortion of that ultimate loss;

  Sad eyes at frenzied eyes will look across,

  Blink, be resigned. The men then will come back.

  How many of these are destined there? Not one

  But may be there, staring; but some may trick

  By attack or by some prodigy of luck

  The sly dog. McPherson in the Chinese sun

  May achieve the annihilation of his will;

  The urbane and bitter Miles at Harvard may

  Discover in time an acid holiday

  And let the long wound of his birth lie still.

  Possibilities, dreams, in a crowded room.

  Fantasy for the academic man,

  Release, distinction. Let the man who can,

  Does any peace know, now arise and come

  Out of the highballs, past the dog, forward.

  (I hope you will be happier where you go

  Than you or we were here, and learn to know

  What satisfactions there are.) No one heard.

  Wayne, 1940

  The Moon and the Night and the Men

  On the night of the Belgian surrender the moon rose

  Late, a delayed moon, and a violent moon

  For the English or the American beholder;

  The French beholder. It was a cold night,

  People put on their wraps, the troops were cold

  No doubt, despite the calendar, no doubt

  Numbers of refugees coughed, and the sight

  Or sound of some killed others. A cold night.

  On Outer Drive there was an accident:

  A stupid well-intentioned man turned sharp

  Right and abruptly he became an angel

  Fingering an unfamiliar harp,

  Or screamed in hell, or was nothing at all.

  Do not imagine this is unimportant.

  He was a part of the night, part of the land,

  Part of the bitter and exhausted ground

  Out of which memory grows.

  Michael and I

  Stared at each other over chess, and spoke

  As little as possible, and drank and played.

  The chessmen caught in the European eye,

  Neither of us I think had a free look

  Although the game was fair. The move one made

  It was difficult at last to keep one’s mind on.

  ‘Hurt and unhappy’ said the man in London.

  We said to each other, The time is coming near

  When none shall have books or music, none his dear,

  And only a fool will speak aloud his mind.

  History is approaching a speechless end,

  As Henry Adams said. Adams was right.

  All this occurred on the night when Leopold

  Fulfilled the treachery four years before

  Begun—or was he well-intentioned, more

  Roadmaker to hell than king? At any rate,

  The moon came up late and the night was cold,

  Many men died—although we know the fate

  Of none, nor of anyone, and the war

  Goes on, and the moon in the breast of man is cold.

  White Feather

  (after a news item)

  Imagine a crowded war-time street

  Down Under. See as little as I:

  The woman gives him as they meet

  Passing, something . . a feather. Try

  To make out this man who was going by.

  The eye stared at the feather.

  He could remember sand and sand,

  The punishing sun on their guns; he chose

  As the men approached the western end

  To move to the left. Who would suppose

  A Lieutenant in civilian clothes?

  The feather stared back.

  He dropt his glass eye in her hand.

  . . Humiliation or fantasy,

  He thought; I have seen too much sand

  For judgment or anger; it may be I,

  All men, deserve the feather’s lie.

  The eye stared at the feather.

  The Enemies of the Angels

  I

  The Irish and the Italians own the place.

  Anyone owns it, if you like, who has

  A dollar minimum; but it is theirs by noise.

  Let them possess it until one o’clock,

  The balconies’ tiers, huddled tables, shroud-

  ed baleful music, and the widening crack

  Across the far wall watching a doomed crowd,

  The fat girl simpering carnations to the boys.

  This is a paradise the people seek,

  To hide, if they but knew, being awake,

  Losses and crisis. This is where they come

  For love, for fun, to forget, dance, to conceal

  Their slow perplexity by the river. Who

  But pities the kissing couple? Who would feel

  Disdain, as she does, being put on show

  By whom she loves? And pity . . our images of home.

  The arrival of the angels is delayed

  An even minute, and I am afraid

  We clapped because they fail to, not because

  They come. Their wings are sorry. The platform

  A little shudders as they back and frisk,

  We’d maul the angels, the whole room is warm,—

  A waste, and a creation without risk;

  Jostling, pale as they vanish, the horse-faced chorine paws.

  The impersonator is our special joy

  And puzzle: did the nurse announce a boy

  Or not? But now the guy is all things, all

  Women and most men howl when he takes off

  Our President, the Shadow, Garbo or Bing

  And other marvellous persons. ‘Sister Rough’

  The sailors at their table, gesturing,

  Soprano, whistling. Still, recall him, and recall

  Mimics we wish we all were, and we are.

  We lack a subject just, we lack a car,

  We would see two Mayors bowing as we pass,

  We wish we had another suit, we wish

  Another chance, we would have Western life

  Where the hero reins and fans, horseflesh is flesh.

  But the heckling man and his embarrassed wife

  Play us across the mirrored room. Where is my glass?

  II

  My tall and singular friend two feet away,

  Where do you go at the end of another day?

  What is your lot, your wife’s lot, under the Lord?

  If you between two certain ages, more

  Nor less, are, and if you revere the Flag

  Or whether, Friend, you find a flag a bore

  And whether Democracy blooms or you see it sag,

  What is your order number at your Local Board?

  Where do you all go? Not with whom you would;

  But where you went as little boys, when good,

  To the plains’ heaven of the silver screen.

  This comic in a greatcoat is your will,

  The faery presence walking among men

  Who mock him: sly, baffled, and powerful

  For imagination is his, and imagination

  Ruins, compels; consider the comedian again.

  The orchestra returns and tunes before

  A spot, a flash, the M. C. through the door

  Glides like a breakfast to your vision—gay

  Indelicate intimate, ‘Jerk, what do you know?’

  An aging, brimstone acrobat in pink
/>   Monkeys her way across the blue boards. Who

  Resists her? Who would be unkind to think

  A human wheel, a frozen smile, is human woe?

  Consider, students, at the convalescent hour

  The fantasy which last week you saw fair,

  Which loses now its eye; its eye is gone.

  Where shall the ten be found to safe us? For

  The enemies of the angels, hard on sleep,

  Weary themselves to find the Gentlemen’s door.

  It is not a little one. Perhaps you weep,

  Three eyes weep in the world you inhabit alone.

  All this resist. Who wish their stays away

  Or wish them tighter tighter—the mourners pray

  In narrowing circles—these are women lost,

  Are men lost in the drag of women’s eyes,

  Salt mouths. Go with the tide, at midnight dream

  Hecklers will vanish like a radical’s lies,

  And all Life slides from drink to drink, the stream

  Slides, and under the stream we join a happy ghost.

  A Poem for Bhain

  Although the relatives in the summer house

  Gossip and grumble, do what relatives do,

  Demand, demand our eyes and ears, demand us,

  You and I are not precisely there

  As they require: heretics, we converse

  Alert and alone, as over a lake of fire

  Two white birds following their profession

  Of flight, together fly, loom, fall and rise,

  Certain of the nature and station of their mission.

  So by the superficial and summer lake

  We talk, and nothing that we say is heard,

  Neither by the relatives who twitter and ache

  Nor by any traveller nor by any bird.

  Boston Common

  A Meditation upon The Hero

  I

  Slumped under the impressive genitals

  Of the bronze charger, protected by bronze,

  By darkness from patrols, by sleep from what

  Assailed him earlier and left him here,

  The man lies. Clothing and organs. These were once

  Shoes. Faint in the orange light

  Flooding the portico above: the whole

  Front of the State House. On a February night.

  II

  Dramatic bivouac for the casual man!

  Beyond the exedra the Common falls,

  Famous and dark, away; a lashing wind;

  Immortal heroes in a marble frame

  Who broke their bodies on Fort Wagner’s walls,

  Robert Gould Shaw astride, and his

  Negroes without name, who followed, who fell