Berryman's Sonnets Read online

  Here in my small book must you dance, then die?

  Rain nor sun greet you first, no friendly shout?

  If the army stands, moves not ahead one scout?

  Sits all your army ever still, small fry?

  And never to all your letters one reply?

  No echo back, your games go on without?

  Dignity under these conditions few

  I feel might muster steadily, and you

  Jitterbug more than you pavanne, poor dears . .

  Only you seem to want to hunt the whole

  House through, scrutators of the difficult soul

  Native here—and pomp’s not for pioneers.

  [ 88 ]

  Anomalous I linger, and ignore

  My blue conviction she will now not come

  Whose grey eyes blur before me like some sum

  A shifting riddle to fatigue . . I pore . .

  Faster they flicker, and flag, moving on slower,

  And I move with them—who am I? a scum

  Thickens on a victim, a delirium

  Begins to mutter, which I must explore.

  O rapt as Monteverdi’s ‘. . note . . note . .’

  I glide aroused—a rumour? or a dream?

  An actual lover? Elmo’s light? erlking?

  —‘I know very well who I am’ said Don Quixote.

  The sourceless lightning laps my stare, the stream

  Backs through the wood, the cosy spiders cling.

  [ 89 ]

  ‘If long enough I sit here, she, she’ll pass.’

  This fatuous, and suffering-inversion,

  And Donne-mimetic, O and true assertion

  Tolls through my hypnagogic mind; alas

  I hang upon this threshold of plate-glass,

  Dry and dull eyes, in the same weird excursion

  As from myself our love-months are, some Persian

  Or Aztec supersession—the land mass

  Extruded first from the archaic sea,

  Whereon a desiccation, and species died

  Except the one somehow learnt to breathe air:

  Unless my lungs adapt me to despair,

  I’ll nod off into the increasing, wide,

  Marvellous sleep my hope lets herald me.

  [ 90 ]

  For you an idyl, was it not, so far,

  Flowing and inconvulsive pastoral,

  I suddenly made out tonight as, all

  The pallor of your face lost like a star,

  It clenched and darkened in your avatar,

  The goddess grounded. Lovers’ griefs appal

  Women, who with their honey brook their gall

  And succor as they can the men they mar.

  Down-soft my joy in the beginning, O

  Dawn-disenchanted since, I hardly remember

  The useful urine-retentive years I sped.

  —I said as little as I could, sick; know

  Your strange heart works; wish us into September

  Only alive, and lovers, and abed.

  [ 91 ]

  Itself a lightning-flash ripping the ‘dark

  Backward’ of you-before, you harrowed me

  How you and the wild boy (larcener-to-be)

  Took horses out one night, full in the stark

  Pre-storm midnight blackness, for a lark,

  At seventeen, drunk, and you whipt them madly

  About the gulph’s rim, lightning-split, with glee

  About, about. A decade: . . I embark.

  How can we know with whom we ride, or soon

  Or later, ever? You . . what are yóu like?

  A topic’s occupied me months, month’s mind.

  But I more startled may, than who shrank down

  And wiped his sharp eyes with a helpless look,

  The great tears falling, when Odysseus struck him, find.

  [ 92 ]

  What can to you this music wakes my years

  (I work you here a wistful specimen)

  Be, to you affable and supple, when

  The music they call music fills your ears?

  Room still? Alive O to my animals’ tears?

  Haunted by cagy sighs? The cries of men

  Versed are you in? Your Tetragrammaton—

  Bach, Mozart, Beethoven & Schubert—hears.

  No quarrel here once! Pindar sang both sides,—

  Two thousand years their easy marriage lasted,

  Until some coldness grew . . they moved apart . .

  Only one now to rile the other rides

  Sometimes, neither will say how he has fasted,

  They stare with desire, and spar . . and crib . . and part.

  [ 93 ]

  The man who made her let me climb the derrick

  At nine (not far from—four—another child)

  Produced this steady daring keeps us wild . .

  I remember the wind wound on me like a lyric.

  One resignation on to more, some cleric

  Has told us, helms, would make the Devil mild

  At last; one boldness so in the spirit filed

  Brings boldness on—collective—atmospheric—

  Character in the end, contented on a slope

  Brakeless, a nervy ledge . . we overgrow

  My derrick into midnights and high dawn,

  The riot where I’m happy—still I hope

  Sometime to dine with you, sometime to go

  Sober to bed, a proper citizen.

  [ 94 ]

  Most strange, my change, this nervous interim.—

  The utter courtship ended, tokens won,

  Assurance salted down . . all this to stun

  More than excite: I blink about me grim

  And dull and anxious, rather than I skim

  Light bright & confident: like a weak pun

  I stumble neither way: Hope weighs a ton:

  Tired certainly, but much less tired than dim.

  —I were absence’ adept, a glaring eye;

  Or I were agile to this joy, this letter,

  You say from Fox Hill: ‘I am not the same.’—

  No more am I: I’m neither: without you I

  Am not myself. My sight is dying. Better

  The searchlights’ torture which we overcame!

  [ 95 ]

  ‘Old Smoky’ when you sing with Peter, Lise,

  Sometimes at night, and your small voices hover

  Mother-and-son but sourceless, O yours over

  The hesitating treble must be his,

  I glide about my metamorphosis

  Gently, a tryst of troubled joy—discover

  Our pine-grove grown a mountain—the true lover

  Soft as a flower, hummingbird-piercing, is.

  I saw him stretch out farther than a wish

  And I have seen him gutted like a fish

  At hipshot midnight for you, by your side.—

  Last night there in your love-seat, you away,

  I sang low to my niece your song, and stray

  Still from myself into you singing slide.

  [ 96 ]

  It will seem strange, no more this range on range

  Of opening hopes and happenings. Strange to be

  One’s name no longer. Not caught up, not free.

  Strange, not to wish one’s wishes onward. Strange,

  The looseness, slopping, time and space estrange.

  Strangest, and sad as a blind child, not to see

  Ever you, never to hear you, endlessly

  Neither you there, nor coming . . Heavy change!—

  An instant there is, Sophoclean, true,

  When Oedipus must understand: his head—

  When Oedipus believes!—tilts like a wave,

  And will not break, only ἰού ἰού

  Wells from his dreadful mouth, the love he led:

  Prolong to Procyon this. This begins my grave.

  [ 97 ]

  I say I laid siege—you enchanted me . .

  Magic and warfare, fait
hful metaphors

  As when their paleolithic woods and tors

  The hunter and the witchwife roamed, half free,

  Half to the Provider and the Mystery-

  riddler bound: the kill, the spell: your languors

  I wag my wolf’s tail to—without remorse?—

  You shudder as I’d pierce you where I knee

  I . . Only we little wished, or you to charm

  Or I to make you shudder, you to wreck

  Or I to hum you daring on my arm.

  Abrupt as a dogfight, the air full of

  Tails and teeth—the meshing of a trek—

  All this began: knock-down-and-drag-out love.

  [ 98 ]

  Mallarmé siren upside down,—rootedly!

  Dare the top crotch, the utmost two limbs plume

  Cloudward, the bole swells just below . . See, from

  Her all these leaves and branches! . . world-green . . free

  To be herself: firm-subtle-grey-brown barky,

  A skin upon her gravest thought: to roam,

  Sea-disinclined . . through the round stair I come,

  A hollow. Board loose down near your rooftree.

  . . I biked out leisurely one day because

  My heart was breaking, and swung up with the casual

  Passion of May again your sycamore . .

  Hand trembling on the top, everything was

  Beautiful, inhuman, green and real as usual.—

  Your hypocrite hangs on the truth, sea-sore.

  [ 99 ]

  A murmuration of the shallow, Crane

  Sees us, or so, twittering at nightfall

  About the eaves, coloured and houseless soul,

  Before the mucksweat rising of the Wain.

  No black or white here; and our given brain

  Troubles us incompletely; if we call

  Sometimes to one another, if we fall

  Sorry, we soon forget; wing’d, but in vain.

  He fell in love once, when upon her arms

  He concentrated what I call his faith . .

  He died, and dropt into a Jersey hole,

  A generation of our culture’s swarms

  Accumulated honey for your wraith—

  Does his wraith watch?—ash-blond and candid soul!

  [ 100 ]

  I am interested alone in making ready,

  Pointed, more splendid, O the Action which

  Attends your whim; bridge interim; enrich

  That unimaginable-still, with study

  So sharp at time the probe shivers back bloody;

  Test the strange circuit but to trust the switch.

  The Muse is real, the random shades I stitch—

  Devoted vicarage—somewhere real, and steady.

  Burnt cork, my leer, my Groucho crouch and rush,

  No more my nature than Cyrano’s: we

  Are ‘hindered characters’ and mock the time,

  The curving and incomprehensible hush

  Einstein requires before that colloquy

  Altared of joy concludes our pantomime!

  [ 101 ]

  Because I’d seen you not believe your lover,

  Because you scouted cries come from no cliff,

  Because to supplications you were stiff

  As Ciro, O as Nero to discover

  Slow how your subject loved you, I would hover

  Between the slave and rebel—till this life

  Arrives: ‘. . was astonished as I would be if

  I leaned against a house and the house fell over . .’

  Well, it fell over, over: trust him now:

  A stronger house than looked—you leaned, and crash,

  My walls and ceiling were to be walked on.—

  The same thing happened once in Chaplin, how

  He solved it now I lose.—Walk on the trash . .

  Walk, softly, triste,—little is really gone.

  [ 102 ]

  A penny, pity, for the runaway ass!

  A nickel for the killer’s twenty-six-mile ride!

  Ice for the root rut-smouldering inside!

  —Eight hundred weeks I have not run to Mass.—

  Toss Jack a jawful of good August grass!

  ‘Soul awful,’ pray for a soul sometimes has cried!

  Wire reasons he seasons should still abide!

  —Hide all your arms where he is bound to pass.—

  Who drew me first aside? her I forgive,

  Or him, as I would be forgotten by

  O be forgiven for salt bites I took.

  Who drew me off last, willy-nilly, live

  On (darling) free. If we meet, know me by

  Your own exempt (I pray) and earthly look.

  [ 103 ]

  A ‘broken heart’ . . but can a heart break, now?

  Lovers have stood bareheaded in love’s ‘storm’

  Three thousand years, changed by their mistress’ ‘charm’,

  Fitted their ‘torment’ to a passive bow,

  Suffered the ‘darts’ under a knitted brow,

  And has one heart broken for all this ‘harm’?

  An arm is something definite. My arm

  Is acting—I hardly know to tell you how.

  It aches . . well, after fifteen minutes of

  Serving, I can’t serve more, it’s not my arm,

  A piece of pain joined to me, helpless dumb thing.

  After four months of work-destroying love

  (An hour, I still don’t lift it: I feel real alarm:

  Weeks of this,—no doctor finds a thing),

  not much; and not all. Still, this is something.

  [ 104 ]

  A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece,

  Diminutive, but room enough . . like clay

  To finger eager on some torrid day . .

  Who’d throw her black hair back, and hang, and tease.

  Never, not once in all one’s horny lease

  To have had a demi-lay, a pretty, gay,

  Snug, slim and supple-breasted girl for play . .

  She bats her big, warm eyes, and slides like grease.

  And cuff her silly-hot again, mouth hot

  And wet her small round writhing—but this screams

  Suddenly awake, unreal as alkahest,

  My God, this isn’t what I want!—You tot

  The harrow-days you hold me to, black dreams,

  The dirty water to get off my chest.

  [ 105 ]

  Three, almost, now into the ass’s years,

  When hard on burden burden galls my back,

  I carry corn feeds others, only crack

  Cudgels, kicks on me, mountainous arrears

  Worsen—avulse my fiery shirt!—The spheres

  May sing with pain, I grieve knee-down, I slack

  Deeper in evil . . love’s demoniac

  Jerguer, who frisked me, hops aside and jeers.

  The dog’s and monkey’s years—pot’s residue,

  Growling and toothless, giggling, grimacing—

  I hope to miss. Who in my child could see

  The adulter and bizarre of thirty-two?—

  But I will seem more silent soon . . mire-king.

  Time, time that damns, disvexes. Unman me.

  [ 106 ]

  Began with swirling, blind, unstilled oh still,—

  The tide had set in toward the western door

  And I was working with the tide, I bore

  My panful of reflexion firm, until

  A voice arrested me,—body, and will,

  And panful, wheeled and spilt, tempted nerves tore,

  And all uncome time blackened like the core

  Of an apple on through man’s heart moving still . .

  At nine o’clock and thirty Thursday night,

  In Nineteen XXXX, February

  Twice-ten-day, by a doorway in McIntosh,

  So quietly neither the rip’s cold slosh

  Nor the meshing of great wheels warned me, unwar
y,

  An enigmatic girl smiled out my sight.

  [ 107 ]

  Darling I wait O in my upstairs box

  O for your footfall, O for your footfáll

  in the extreme heat—I don’t mind at all,

  it’s silence has me and the no of clocks

  keeping us isolated longer: rocks

  did the first martyr and will do to stall

  our enemies, I’ll get up on the roof of the hall

  and heave freely. The University of Soft Knocks

  will headlines in the Times make: Fellow goes mad,

  crowd panics, rhododendrons injured. Slow

  will flow the obituaries while the facts get straight,

  almost straight. He was in love and he was had.

  That was it: he should have stuck to his own mate,

  before he went a-coming across the sea-O.

  [ 108 ]

  I owe you, do I not, a roofer: though

  My sister-in-law and her nephews stayed,

  Not I stayed. O kind sister-outlaw, laid

  Far off and legally four weeks, stoop low,

  For my true thanks are fugitive also

  Only to you;—stop off your cant, you jade,

  Bend down,—I have not ever disobeyed

  You; and you will hear what it is I owe.

  I owe you thanks for evenings in that house

  When . . neither here, nor there, no where, were you,

  Nights like long knives; . . two letters! . . times when your voice

  Nearly I latched. Another debit to

  Your kinder husband. From the country of Choice

  Another province chopt,—and they were few.

  [ 109 ]

  Ménage à trois, like Tristan’s,—difficult! . .

  The convalescent Count; his mistress; fast

  The wiry wild arthritic young fantast

  In love with her, his genius occult,

  His weakness blazing, ugly, an insult

  A salutation; in his yacht they assed

  Up and down the whole coast six months . . last

  It couldn’t: . . the pair to Paris. Chaos, result.