Berryman's Sonnets Read online

Well—but four worse!! . . all four, marvellous friends—

  Some horse-shit here, eh?—You admitted it,

  Come, you did once . . and we are friends, I say.—

  ‘La Cuchiani aima Tristan, mais . .’

  (The biographer says) unscrupulous a bit,

  Or utterly … There, of course, the resemblance ends.

  [ 110 ]

  ‘Ring us up when you want to see us . .’ —‘Sure,’

  Said Moses to the SS woman, smil-

  ing hopeless Moses.—Put her whip and file

  Away and walked away, strip-murderer,

  A svelte Lise, whistling … Knowing, it’s all your

  (Alas) initiation: you I can’t: while

  We are relationless, ‘us’?—Hail, chat: cant, heil!—

  Hypocrite-perfect! hoping I endure.

  A winter-shore is forming in my eye,

  The widest river: down to it we dash,

  In love, but I am naked, and shake; so,

  Uncoloured-thick-oil clad, you nod and cry

  Let’s go!’ . . white fuzzless limbs you razor flash,

  And I am to follow the way you go.

  27 August

  [ 111 ]

  Christian to Try: “I am so coxed in it,

  All I can do is pull, pull without shame,

  Backwards,—on the coxswain fall the fiery blame,

  I slump free and exhausted.”—“Stop a bit,”

  Try studied his sloe gin, “if you must fit

  A trope so, you must hope to quit the game”

  Pursued my brown friend with the plausible name

  “Before your heart enlarging mucks you. Minute

  By minute you pull faster.”—But I too

  Am named, though lost . . you learn God’s will, give in,

  After, whatever, you sit on, you sit.

  Try “Quit” said “and be free.” I freeze to you

  And I am free now of the fire of this sin

  I choose . . I lose, yes . . but then I submit!

  [ 112 ]

  I break my pace now for a sonic boom,

  the future’s with & in us. I sit fired

  but comes on strong with the fire fatigue: I’m tired.

  ‘I’d drive my car across the living-room

  if I could get it inside the house.’ You loom

  less, less than before when your voice choired

  into my transept hear I now it, not expired

  but half-dead with exhaustion, like Mr Bloom.

  Dazzle, before I abandon you, my eyes,

  my eyes which I need for journeys difficult

  in which case it may be said that I survive you.

  Your voice continues, with its lows & highs,

  and I am a willing accomplice in the cult

  and every word that I have gasped of you is true.

  [ 113 ]

  ‘I didn’t see anyone else, I just saw Lise’

  Anne Frank remorseful from the grave: ah well,

  it was a vision of her mother in Hell,

  a payment beforehand for rebellion’s seize,

  whereby she grew up: springing from her knees

  she saw her parents level. I ward your spell

  away, and I try hard to look at you level

  but that is quite unaccustomed to me, Lise.

  Months I lookt up, entranced by you up there

  like a Goya ceiling which will not come down,

  in swirling clouds, until the end is here.

  Tetélestai. We steamed in a freighter from Spain

  & I will never see those frescoes again

  nor need to, having memorized your cloudy gown.

  [ 114 ]

  You come blonde visiting through the black air

  knocking on my hinged lawn-level window

  and you will come for years, above, below,

  & through to interrupt my study where

  I’m sweating it out like asterisks: so there,—

  you are the text, my work’s broken down so

  I found, after my grandmother died, slow,

  and I had flown far South to her funeral spare

  but crowded with relations, I found her last

  letter unopened, much less answered: shame

  overcame me so far I paused & cried

  in my underground study, for all the past

  undone & never again to walk tall, lame

  at the mercy of your presence to abide.

  [ 115 ]

  All we were going strong last night this time,

  the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris

  were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise

  listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,

  my head was frantic with a following rime:

  it was a good evening, an evening to please,

  I kissed her in the kitchen—ecstasies—

  among so much good we tamped down the crime.

  The weather’s changing. This morning was cold,

  as I made for the grove, without expectation,

  some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,

  to read her if she came. Presently the sun

  yellowed the pines & my lady came not

  in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.

  ALSO BY JOHN BERRYMAN

  POETRY

  Poems (1942)

  The Dispossessed (1948)

  Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956)

  His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt (1958)

  77 Dream Songs (1964)

  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)

  The Freedom of the Poet (1976)

  Berryman’s Shakespeare (1999)

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 1952, 1967 by John Berryman

  Copyright renewed © 1995 by Kate Berryman

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by April Bernard

  All rights reserved

  Published in 1967 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  This paperback edition, 2014

  eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-374-53454-7

  www.fsgbooks.com

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  eISBN 9781466879621

  First eBook Edition: September 2014