Berryman's Sonnets Read online

  Striking my hands, they say repeatedly

  I muttered; although I could hear and see

  I knew no one.—I am silent in my chair,

  And stronger and more cold is my despair

  At last, for I have come into a country

  Whose vivid Queen upon no melody

  Admits me. Manchmal glaub ich, ich kann nicht mehr.

  Song follows song, the chatterer to the fire

  Would follow soon . . Deep in Ur’s royal pits

  Sit still the courtly bodies, a little bowl

  By each, attired to voluntary blitz . .

  In Shub-ad’s grave the fingers of a girl

  Were touching still, when they found her, the strings of her lyre.

  [ 66 ]

  Astronomies and slangs to find you, dear,

  Star, art-breath, crowner, conscience! and to chart

  For kids unborn your distal beauty, part

  On part that startles, till you blaze more clear

  And witching than your sister Venus here

  To a late age can, though her senior start

  Is my new insomnia,—swift sleepless art

  To draw you even . . and to draw you near.

  I prod our English: cough me up a word,

  Slip me an epithet will justify

  My daring fondle, fumble of far fire

  Crackling nearby, unreasonable as a surd,

  A flash of light, an insight: I am the shy

  Vehicle of your cadmium shine . . your choir.

  [ 67 ]

  Faith like the warrior ant swarming, enslaving

  Or griding others, you gave me soft as dew,

  My darling, drawing me suddenly into you,

  Your arms’ strong kindness at my back, your weaving

  Thighs agile to me, white teeth in your heaving

  Hard, your face bright and dark, back, as we screw

  Our lives together—twin convulsion—blue

  Crests curl, to rest . . again the ivy waving.

  Faiths other fall. Afterwards I kissed you

  So (Lise) long, and your eyes so waxed, marine,

  Wider I drowned . . light to their surface drawn

  Down met the wild light (derelict weeks I missed you

  Leave me forever) upstreaming; never-seen,

  Your radiant glad soul surfaced in the dawn.

  [ 68 ]

  Where the lane from the highway swerves the first drops fell

  Like lead, I bowed my head and drifted up.

  Now in the grove they pat like footsteps, but

  Not hers, Despair’s. In slant lines sentinel

  Silver and thin, it rains so into Hell,

  Unvisited these thousand years. I grope

  A little in the wind after a hope

  For sun before she wakes . . all might be well.

  All might yet be well . . I wandered just

  Down to the upper lane now, the sky was clearing,

  And as I scrawl, the sun breaks. Ah, what use?

  She said if rain, no,—in vain self-abuse

  I lie a fairy well! cloud disappearing

  Not lonelier, leaving like me: we must.

  [ 69 ]

  For you am I collared O to quit my dear

  My sandy-haired mild good and most beautiful

  Most helpless and devoted wife? I pull

  Crazy away from this; but too from her

  Resistlessly I draw off, months have, far

  And quarrelling—irrelation—numb and dull

  Dead Sea with tiny aits . . Love at the full

  Had wavered, seeing, foresuffering us here.

  Unhappy all her lone strange life until

  Somehow I friended it. And the Master catches

  Me strongly from behind, and clucks, and tugs.

  He has, has he? my heart-relucting will.

  She spins on silent and the needle scratches.

  —This all, Lise? and stark kisses, stealthy hugs?

  [ 70 ]

  Under Scorpion both, back in the Sooner State

  Where the dry winds winnow the soul, we both were born,

  And we have cast our origin, and the Horn

  Neither has frankly scanted, others imitate

  Us; and we have come a long way, late

  For depth enough, betimes enough for torn

  Hangnails of nerves and innocent love, we turn

  Together in this vize lips, eyes, our Fate.

  When the cam slid, the prodigious fingers tightened

  And we began to fuse, weird afternoon

  Early in May (the Third), we both were frightened;

  A month we writhed, in sudden love like a scrimmage;

  June’s wide loss worse; the fortnight after June

  Worst. Vize and woe worked us this perfect image!

  [ 71 ]

  Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying

  Wafer and wine to the human wound, we laid

  Ourselves to cure ourselves down: I’m afraid

  Our vestments wanted, but Francis’ friends were crying

  In the nave of pines, sun-satisfied, and flying

  Subtle as angels about the barricade

  Boughs made over us, deep in a bed half made

  Needle-soft, half the sea of our simultaneous dying.

  ‘Death is the mother of beauty.’ Awry no leaf

  Shivering with delight, we die to be well . .

  Careless with sleepy love, so long unloving.

  What if our convalescence must be brief

  As we are, the matin meet the passing bell? . .

  About our pines our sister, wind, is moving.

  [ 72 ]

  A Cambridge friend put in,—one whom I used

  To pay small rope at chess to, who in vain

  Luffed up to free a rook,—and through the strain

  Of ten-year-old talk cocktails partly loosed

  I forgot you, forgot you, for the first

  Hour in months of watches . . Mozart’s pain

  I heard then, in the cranny of the hurricane,

  As since the chrisom caught me up immersed

  I have heard nothing but the sough of the sea

  And wide upon the open sea my friend

  The sea-wind crying, out of its cave to roam

  No more, no more . . until my memory

  Swung you back like a lock: I sing the end,

  Tolerant Aeolus to call me home.

  [ 73 ]

  Demand me again what Kafka’s riddles mean,

  For I am the penal colony’s prime scribe:

  From solitary, firing against the tribe

  Uncanny judgments ancient and unclean.

  I am the officer flat on my own machine,

  Priest of the one Law no despair can bribe,

  On whom the mort-prongs hover to inscribe

  ‘I FELL IN LOVE’ . . O none of this foreseen,

  Adulteries and divorces cold I judged

  And strapped the tramps flat. Now the harrow trembles

  Down, a strap snaps, I wave—out of control—

  To you to change the legend has not budged

  These years: make the machine grave on me (stumbles

  Someone to latch the strap) ‘I MET MY SOUL’.

  [ 74 ]

  All I did wrong, all the Grand Guignol years,

  Tossed me here still able to touch you still.

  I took the false turn on the fantastic hill

  Continually, until the top appears.

  Even my blind (last night) disordered tears

  Conducted me to-morning. When I grew ill

  Two years, I only taxed my doctors’ skill

  To pass me to you fixed . . The damned sky clears

  Into a decent sun (this week’s the worst

  Ever I see-saw) half an hour: this town

  My tomb becomes a kind of paradise . .

  How then complain? Rain came with a burst,

  Ridding the sky. Was it this e
vil clown

  Or surviving lover you called to you? . . twice.

  18 July

  [ 75 ]

  Swarthy when young; who took the tonsure; sign,

  His coronation, wangled, his name re-said

  For euphony; off to courts fluttered, and fled;

  Professorships refused; upon one line

  Worked years; and then that genial concubine.

  Seventy springs he read, and wrote, and read.

  On the day of the year his people found him dead

  I read his story. Anew I studied mine.

  Also there was Laura and three-seventeen

  Sonnets to something like her . . twenty-one years . .

  He never touched her. Swirl our crimes and crimes.

  Gold-haired (too), dark-eyed, ignorant of rimes

  Was she? Virtuous? The old brume seldom clears.

  —Two guilty and crepe-yellow months

  Lise! be our bright surviving actual scene.

  [ 76 ]

  The two plantations Greatgrandmother brought

  My bearded General, back in a world would burn,

  I thresh excited as I see return

  Odd in this symbol you me last night taught . .

  Your Two-fields rapt into the family ought

  To save us: sensitivity, elegant, fern-

  subtle, knit upon vigour enough to turn

  A nation’s strong decline. I grind my thought

  A bit more, and I bare the quick of the have

  And have not, half have, less than half, O this

  Fantasy of your gates ajar, gates barred.

  Poaching and rack-rent do you hope will save

  True to ourselves us, darling? owners, Lise!—

  Heiress whose lovely holdings lie

  too forkt for truth; called also Kierkegaard.

  [ 77 ]

  Fall and rise of her midriff bells. I watch.

  Blue knee-long shorts, striped light shirt. Bright between

  Copt hills of the cushion a lazy green

  Her sun-incomparable face I watch.

  A darkness dreams adown her softest crotch,

  A hand dreams on her breast, two fingers lean,

  The ring shows like a wound. Her hair swirls clean

  Alone in the vague room’s morning-after botch.

  Endymion’s Glaucus through a thousand years

  Collected the bodies of lovers lost, until

  His own beloved’s body rustled and sighed . .

  So I would, O to spring—blotting her fears,

  The others in this house, the house, road, hill—

  As once she up the stair sprang to me, lips wide!

  [ 78 ]

  On the wheat-sacks, sullen with the ceaseless damp,

  William and I sat hours and talked of you,

  I talked of you. Potting porter. Just a few

  Fireflies were out, no stars, no moon; no lamp.

  The Great Dane licked my forearm like a stamp,

  Surprisingly, in total darkness. Who

  Responds with peaceful gestures, calm and new

  This while, your home-strong love’s ferocious tramp?

  Insonorous and easy night! I lusk,

  Until we rise and strike rake-handles in

  The nervous sacks to prod and mix with air;

  Lest a flame sing out invisible and brusk

  About the black barn . . Kingston (and my chin

  Sank on the rake-end) suddenly

  I longed for sick, your toxic music there.

  [ 79 ]

  I dreamt he drove me back to the asylum

  Straight after lunch; we stood then at one end,

  A sort of cafeteria behind, my friend

  Behind me, nuts in groups about the room;

  A dumbwaiter with five shelves was waiting (some-

  thing’s missing here) to take me up—I bend

  And lift a quart of milk to hide and tend,

  Take with me. Everybody is watching, dumb.

  I try to put it first among some worm-

  shot volumes of the N. E. D. I had

  On the top shelf —then somewhere else . . slowly

  Lise comes up in a matron’s uniform

  And with a look (I saw once) infinitely sad

  In her grey eyes takes it away from me.

  [ 80 ]

  Infallible symbolist!—Tanker driven ashore,

  An oil-ship by a tropical hurricane

  Wrecked on a Delaware beach, the postcard’s scene;

  On the reverse, words without signature:

  Je m’en fiche du monde sans toi—in your

  Hand for years busy in the liquid main

  To tank you on—your Tulsa father’s vein,

  Oil. All the worked and wind-slapt waters roar.

  O my dear I am sorry, sorry, and glad! and glad

  To trope you helpless, there, and needing me,

  Where the dangerous land meets the disordered sea . .

  Rich on the edge we wait our salvage, sad

  And joyous, nervous, that the hired men come

  Whom we require, to split us painfully home.

  [ 81 ]

  Four oval shadows, paired, ringed each by sun,

  The closer smaller pair behind, third pair

  Beating symmetrical to the sides in air

  Apparently—the water-spiders’ dun

  Bodies above unlike their shadows run,

  Skim with six wires about a black-backed, fair-

  bellied and long tube which does not appear

  In the atomic drawings on the shallow mud.

  My shadow on the vines and water should—

  If so it were as Gath in Babylon—

  Show a lover’s neurons waiting for a letter,

  Brook near the postbox, or man’s fission’s crack

  Of comfortable doom. Wé do this better: . .

  A solid hypocrite squats there in black.

  [ 82 ]

  Why can’t, Lise, why shouldn’t they fall in love?

  Mild both, both still in mix of studies, still

  Unsteadied into life, novices of the will,

  Formed upon others (us), disciples of

  The Master and the revisionists: enough

  Apart from their attraction, to unstill

  The old calm loves (cyclonic loves) until

  The electric air shocks them together, rough,

  But better in love than grief, who can afford

  No storms (ours). Fantasy! … Forget.

  —I write this leaving Pennsylvania’s farms,

  Seats 37, 12 Standees, I am tired

  Unspeakably of standing: Kiss me, and let

  Let me sit down and take you in my arms.

  [ 83 ]

  Impossible to speak to her, and worse

  To keep on silent, silent hypocrite

  Bound for my kindness or my lack of it

  Solely to strength you crumple or you nurse

  By not being or being with me. Curse

  This kindness tricks her to think bit by bit

  We will be more together . . better . . sit

  The poor time out, and then the good rehearse—

  When neither my fondness nor my pity can

  O no more bend me to Esther with love,

  Gladden the sad eyes my lost eyes have seen

  With such and so long ache, ah to unman.

  When she calls, small, and grieving I must move,

  The horror and beauty of your eyes burn between.

  [ 84 ]

  I wished, all the mild days of middle March

  This special year, your blond good-nature might

  (Lady) admit—kicking abruptly tight

  With will and affection down your breast like starch—

  Me to your story, in Spring, and stretch, and arch.

  But who not flanks the wells of uncanny light

  Sudden in bright sand towering? A bone sunned white.

  Considering traveller
s bypass these and parch.

  This came to less yes than an ice cream cone

  Let stand . . though still my sense of it is brisk:

  Blond silky cream, sweet cold, aches: a door shut.

  Errors of order! Luck lies with the bone,

  Who rushed (and rests) to meet your small mouth, risk

  Your teeth irregular and passionate.

  [ 85 ]

  Spendthrift Urethra—Sphincter, frugal one—

  Masters from darkness in your double sway

  Whom favouring either all chaotic stray—

  Adjust us to our love! . . Unlust undone,

  Wave us together out of the running sun

  Suddenly, and rapt from our shore-play,

  My loss your consolation and protégé,

  Down at a stroke whelmed, while the waters run.

  O serious as our play, my nervous plea!

  . . Hallucinatory return to the warm and real

  Dark, still, happy apartment after the riot . .

  Wounded, be well, and sleep sound as the sea

  Vexed in wide night by no wind, but the wheel

  Roils down to zero . . steady . . archaic quiet.

  [ 86 ]

  Our lives before bitterly our mistake!—

  We should have been together seething years,

  We should have been the tomb-bat hangs and hears

  Sounds inconceivable, been a new snowflake,

  We should have been the senile world’s one sake,

  Vestigial lovers, tropical and fierce

  Among fatigues and snows, the gangs and queers,

  We should have been the bloom of a cockcrow lake.

  . . A child’s moon, child’s fire!—What I love of you

  Inter alia tingles like a whole good day,

  A hard wind, or a Strad’s consummate pluck,

  Proficient, full and strong, shrewd as the blue

  Profound sky, pale as a winter sky you lay

  And with these breasts whiter than stars gave suck.

  [ 87 ]

  Is it possible, poor kids, you must not come out?

  Care for you none but Lise, to whom you cry?