77 Dream Songs Read online

  to hail who storms no father’s throne. Bell, book

  & candle rule, in silence. Hour by hour

  from time to time with holy oil

  touch yet the forehead eyelids nose

  lips ears breast fists of Krushchev, for Christ knows

  poor evil Kadar, cut, is back in power.

  Boils his throne. The moujik kneels & votes.

  South & east of the others’ tombs—where? why,

  in Arkhanghelsky, on the Baptist’s side,

  lies Brother Jonas (formerly Ivan the Terrible),

  where Brother Josef came with his fiend’s heart

  out of such guilt it proved all bearable,

  and Brother Nikita will come and lie.

  60

  Afters eight years, be less dan eight percent,

  distinguish’ friend, of coloured wif de whites

  in de School, in de Souf.

  —Is coloured gobs, is coloured officers,

  Mr Bones. Dat’s nuffin? —Uncle Tom,

  sweep shut yo mouf,

  is million blocking from de proper job,

  de fairest houses & de churches eben.

  —You may be right, Friend Bones.

  Indeed you is. Dey flyin ober de world,

  de pilots, ober ofays. Bit by bit

  our immemorial moans

  brown down to all dere moans. I flees that, sah.

  They brownin up to ourn. Who gonna win?

  —I wouldn’t predict.

  But I do guess mos peoples gonna lose.

  I never saw no pinkie wifout no hand.

  O my, without no hand.

  61

  Full moon. Our Narragansett gales subside

  and the land is celebrating men of war

  more or less, less or more.

  In valleys, thin on headlands, narrow & wide

  our targets rest. In us we trust. Far, near,

  the bivouacs of fear

  are solemn in the moon somewhere tonight,

  in turning time. It’s late for gratitude,

  an annual, rude

  roar of a moment’s turkey’s ‘Thanks’. Bright & white

  their ordered markers undulate away

  awaiting no day.

  Away from us, from Henry’s feel or fail,

  campaigners lie with mouldered toes, disarmed,

  out of order,

  with whom we will one. The war is real,

  and a sullen glory pauses over them harmed,

  incident to murder.

  62

  That dark brown rabbit, lightness in his ears

  & underneath, gladdened our afternoon

  munching a crab-’.

  That rabbit was a fraud, like a black bull

  prudent I admired in Zaragoza, who

  certainly was brave as a demon

  but would not charge, being willing not to die.

  The rabbit’s case, a little different,

  consisted in alert

  & wily looks down the lawn, where nobody was,

  with prickt ears, while rapt but chatting on the porch

  we sat in view nearby.

  Then went he mildly by, and around behind

  my cabin, and when I followed, there he just sat.

  Only at last

  he turned down around, passing my wife at four feet

  and hopped the whole lawn and made thro’ the hedge for the big house.

  —Mr Bones, we all brutes & fools.

  63

  Bats have no bankers and they do not drink

  and cannot be arrested and pay no tax

  and, in general, bats have it made.

  Henry for joining the human race is bats,

  known to be so, by few them who think,

  out of the cave.

  Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,

  ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve

  with personal radar,

  crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,

  inside, my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights

  reflect on the whites of our eyes.

  He then salutes for sixty years of it

  just now a one of valor and insights,

  a theatrical man,

  O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might

  have killed as cast you. Olè. Stormed with years

  he tranquil commands and appears.

  64

  Supreme my holdings, greater yet my need,

  thoughtless I go out. Dawn. Have I my cig’s,

  my flaskie O,

  O crystal cock,—my kneel has gone to seed,—

  and anybody’s blessing? (Blast the MIGs

  for making fumble so

  my tardy readying.) Yes, utter’ that.

  Anybody’s blessing? —Mr Bones,

  you makes too much

  démand. I might be ’fording you a hat:

  it gonna rain. —I knew a one of groans

  & greed & spite, of a crutch,

  who thought he had, a vile night, been—well—blest.

  He see someone run off. Why not Henry,

  with his grasp of desire?

  —Hear matters hard to manage at de best,

  Mr Bones. Tween what we see, what be,

  is blinds. Them blinds’ on fire.

  65

  A freaking ankle crabbed his blissful trips,

  this whisky tastes like California

  but is Kentucky,

  like Berkeley where he truly worked at it

  but nothing broke all night—no fires—one dawn,

  crowding his luck,

  flowed down along the cliffs to the Big Sur

  where Henry Miller’s box is vomit-green

  and Henry bathed in sulphur

  lovely, hot, over the sea, like Senator

  Cat, relaxed & sober, watery

  as Tivoli, sir.

  No Christmas jaunts for fractured cats. Hot dog,

  the world is places where he will not go

  this wintertide or again.

  Does Striding Edge block wild the sky as then

  when Henry with his mystery was two

  & twenty, high on the hog?

  66

  ‘All virtues enter into this world:’)

  A Buddhist, doused in the street, serenely burned.

  The Secretary of State for War,

  winking it over, screwed a redhaired whore.

  Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week.

  A journalism doggy took a leak

  against absconding coon (‘but take one virtue,

  without which a man can hardly hold his own’)

  the sun in the willow

  shivers itself & shakes itself green-yellow

  (Abba Pimen groaned, over the telephone,

  when asked what that was:)

  How feel a fellow then when he arrive

  in fame but lost? but affable, top-shelf.

  Quelle sad semaine.

  He hardly know his selving. (‘that a man’)

  Henry grew hot, got laid, felt bad, survived

  (‘should always reproach himself’.

  67

  I don’t operate often. When I do,

  persons take note.

  Nurses look amazed. They pale.

  The patient is brought back to life, or so.

  The reason I don’t do this more (I quote)

  is: I have a living to fail—

  because of my wife & son—to keep from earning.

  —Mr Bones, I sees that.

  They for these operations thanks you, what?

  not pays you. —Right.

  You have seldom been so understanding.

  Now there is further a difficulty with the light:

  I am obliged to perform in complete darkness

  operations of great delicacy

  on my self.

  —Mr Bones, you terrifies me.

  No wonder they don’t pay you. Will you die?


  —My

  friend, I succeeded. Later.

  68

  I heard, could be, a Hey there from the wing,

  and I went on: Miss Bessie soundin good

  that one, that night of all,

  I feelin fair mysef, taxes & things

  seem to be back in line, like everybody should

  and nobody in the snow on call

  so, as I say, the house is givin hell

  to Yellow Dog, I blowin like it too

  and Bessie always do

  when she make a very big sound—after, well,

  no sound—I see she totterin—I cross which stage

  even at Henry’s age

  in 2-3 seconds: then we wait and see.

  I hear strange horns, Pinetop he hit some chords,

  Charlie start Empty Bed,

  they all come hangin Christmas on some tree

  after trees thrown out—sick-house’s white birds’,

  black to the birds instead.

  69

  Love her he doesn’t but the thought he puts

  into that young woman

  would launch a national product

  complete with TV spots & skywriting

  outlets in Bonn & Tokyo

  I mean it

  Let it be known that nine words have not passed

  between herself and Henry;

  looks, smiles.

  God help Henry, who deserves it all

  every least part of that infernal & unconscious

  woman, and the pain.

  I feel as if, unique, she … Biddable?

  Fates, conspire.

  —Mr Bones, please.

  —Vouchsafe me, Sleepless One,

  a personal experience of the body of Mrs Boogry

  before I pass from lust!

  70

  Disengaged, bloody, Henry rose from the shell

  where in their racing start his seat got wedged

  under his knifing knees,

  he did it on the runners, feathering,

  being bow, catching no crab. The ridges were sore

  & tore chamois. It was not done with ease.

  So Henry was a hero, malgré lui,

  that day, for blundering; until & after the coach

  said this & which to him.

  That happy day, whenas the pregnant back

  of Number Two returned, and he’d no choice

  but to make for it room.

  Therefore he rowed rowed rowed. They did not win.

  Forever in the winning & losing since

  of his own crew, or rather

  in the weird regattas of this afterworld,

  cheer for the foe. He set himself to time

  the blue father.

  71

  Spellbound held subtle Henry all his four

  hearers in the racket of the market

  with ancient signs, infamous characters,

  new rhythms. On the steps he was beloved,

  hours a day, by all his four, or more,

  depending. And they paid him.

  It was not, so, like no one listening

  but critics famed & Henry’s pals or other

  tellers at all

  chiefly in another country. No.

  He by the heart & brains & tail, because

  of their love for it, had them.

  Junk he said to all them open-mouthed.

  Weather wóuld govern. When the monsoon spread

  its floods, few came, two.

  Came a day when none, though he began

  in his accustomed way on the filthy steps

  in a crash of waters, came.

  72

  The Elder Presences

  Shh! on a twine hung from disastered trees

  Henry is swinging his daughter. They seem drunk.

  Over across them look out,

  tranquil, the high statues of the wise.

  Her feet peep, like a lady’s in sleep sunk.

  That which this scene’s about—

  he pushes violent, his calves distend,

  his mouth is open with effort, so is hers,

  in the Supreme Court garden,

  the justices lean, negro, out, the trees bend,

  man’s try began too long ago, with chirrs

  & leapings, begging pardon—

  I will deny the gods of the garden say.

  Henry’s perhaps to break his burnt-cork luck.

  I further will deny

  good got us up that broad shoreline. Greed may

  like a fuse, but with the high shore we is stuck,

  whom they overlook. Why,—

  73

  Karesansui, Ryoan-ji

  The taxi makes the vegetables fly.

  ‘Dozo kudasai,’ I have him wait.

  Past the bright lake up into the temple,

  shoes off, and

  my right leg swings me left.

  I do survive beside the garden I

  came seven thousand mile the other way

  supplied of engines all to see, to see.

  Differ them photographs, plans lie:

  how big it is!

  austere a sea rectangular of sand by the oiled mud wall,

  and the sand is not quite white: granite sand, grey,

  —from nowhere can one see all the stones—

  but helicopters or a Brooklyn reproduction

  will fix that—

  and the fifteen changeless stones in their five worlds

  with a shelving of moving moss

  stand me the thought of the ancient maker priest.

  Elsewhere occurs—I remembers—loss.

  Through awes & weathers neither it increased

  nor did one blow of all his stone & sand thought die.

  74

  Henry hates the world. What the world to Henry

  did will not bear thought.

  Feeling no pain,

  Henry stabbed his arm and wrote a letter

  explaining how bad it had been

  in this world.

  Old yellow, in a gown

  might have made a difference, ‘these lower beauties’,

  and chartreuse could have mattered

  “Kyoto, Toledo,

  Benares—the holy cities—

  and Cambridge shimmering do not make up

  for, well, the horror of unlove,

  nor south from Paris driving in the Spring

  to Siena and on…”

  Pulling together Henry, somber Henry

  woofed at things.

  Spry disappointments of men

  and vicing adorable children

  miserable women, Henry mastered, Henry

  tasting all the secret bits of life.

  75

  Turning it over, considering, like a madman

  Henry put forth a book.

  No harm resulted from this.

  Neither the menstruating stars (nor man) was moved

  at once.

  Bare dogs drew closer for a second look

  and performed their friendly operations there.

  Refreshed, the bark rejoiced.

  Seasons went and came.

  Leaves fell, but only a few.

  Something remarkable about this

  unshedding bulky bole-proud blue-green moist

  thing made by savage & thoughtful

  surviving Henry

  began to strike the passers from despair

  so that sore on their shoulders old men hoisted

  six-foot sons and polished women called

  small girls to dream awhile toward the flashing & bursting tree!

  76

  Henry’s Confession

  Nothin very bad happen to me lately.

  How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones,

  terms o’ your bafflin odd sobriety.

  Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,

  what could happen bad to Mr Bones?

  —If life is a handkerchief sandwich,


  in a modesty of death I join my father

  who dared so long agone leave me.

  A bullet on a concrete stoop

  close by a smothering southern sea

  spreadeagled on an island, by my knee.

  —You is from hunger, Mr Bones,

  I offers you this handkerchief, now set

  your left foot by my right foot,

  shoulder to shoulder, all that jazz,

  arm in arm, by the beautiful sea,

  hum a little, Mr Bones.

  —I saw nobody coming, so I went instead.

  77

  Seedy Henry rose up shy in de world

  & shaved & swung his barbells, duded Henry up

  and p.a.’d poor thousands of persons on topics of grand

  moment to Henry, ah to those less & none.

  Wif a book of his in either hand

  he is stript down to move on.

  —Come away, Mr Bones.

  —Henry is tired of the winter,

  & haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national mind, & Spring (in the city so called).

  Henry likes Fall.

  Hé would be prepared to líve in a world of Fáll

  for ever, impenitent Henry.

  But the snows and summers grieve & dream;

  thése fierce & airy occupations, and love,

  raved away so many of Henry’s years

  it is a wonder that, with in each hand

  one of his own mad books and all,

  ancient fires for eyes, his head full

  & his heart full, he’s making ready to move on.

  ALSO BY JOHN BERRYMAN

  POETRY

  Poems (1942)

  The Dispossessed (1948)

  Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956)

  His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt (1958)

  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)

  The Heart Is Strange (2014)

  PROSE

  Stephen Crane: A Critical Biography (1950)

  The Arts of Reading (with Ralph Ross and Allen Tate) (1960)

  Recovery (1973)