John Berryman Read online

  If time’s map bore the brat of time intact?

  Odysseys I examine, bed on a board,

  Heartbreak familiar as the heart is strange.

  In the city of the stranger I discovered

  Strike and corruption: cars reared on the bench

  To horn their justice at the citizen’s head

  And hallow the citizen deaf, half-dead.

  The quiet man from his own window saw

  Insane wind take the ash, his favourite branch

  Wrench, crack; the hawk came down, the raven hovered.

  Slow spent stars wheel and dwindle where I fell.

  Physicians are a constellation where

  The blown brain sits a fascist to the heart.

  Late, it is late, and it is time to start.

  Sanction the civic woe, deal with your dear,

  Convince the stranger: none of us is well.

  We must travel in the direction of our fear.

  II

  By what weird ways, Mather and Boone, we came.

  Ethan Allen, father, in the rebel wood

  Teach trust and disobedience to the son

  Who neither obeys nor can disobey One

  No longer, down the reaches of his longing, known.

  Speak from the forest and declare my blood

  Dishonour, a trick a mockery my name.

  You, Shaver, other shade, rébel again,

  Great-grandfather, attest my hopeless need

  Amongst the chromium luxury of the age

  Uncomfortable, threadbare, apt to rage.

  Recall your office, exile; tell me now

  To devour the annals of the valuable dead,

  Fish for the cortex, candour for my pain.

  Horizons perish from a hacking eye! . .

  The Hero, haggard on the top of time,

  Enacts his inconceivable woe and pride

  Plunging his enemies down the mountainside,

  Lesson and master. We are come to learn

  Compassion from the last and piercing scream

  Of who was lifted before he could die.

  Animal-and-Hero, where you lounge the air

  Is the air of summer, smooth and masculine

  As skin over a muscle; but the day

  Darkens, and it is time to move away.

  Old friends unbolt the night wherein you roam;

  Wind rises, lightning, rain beats, you begin

  The climb the conflict that are your desire.

  In storm and gloom, before it is too late

  I make my testament. I bequeath my heart

  To the disillusioned few who have wished me well;

  My vision I leave to one who has the will

  To master it, and the consuming art;

  What else—the sorrow, the disease, the hate—

  I scatter; and I am prepared to start.

  III

  What is the age of naked man? His time

  Scrawls the engrossing tumult on green mould

  In a cellar and disreputable place.

  Consternation and Hope war in his face.

  Writhing upon his bed who achieves sleep

  Who is alone? Man in the cradle, old,

  Rocks on the fiery earth, smoke is his fame.

  Prophecy is another smoke, and lost.

  To say that country, time to come, will be

  The island or harbour city of our choice

  Argues the sick will raving in the voice.

  The pythoness is mute upon her bier,

  Cassandra took a thrust she would not see

  And dropt for daughter an inarticulate ghost.

  The animal within the animal

  How shall we satisfy? With toys its fear,

  With incantation its adorable trust?

  Shall we say ‘We were once and we shall be dust’

  Or nourish it with confident lies and look

  Contentment? What can the animal bear?

  Whose version brightens that will not appal?

  Watch in the valleys for the sign of snow.

  Watch the light. Where the riotous leaves lay

  Will arise a winter man at the New Year

  And speak. No eye will be dry, none shall fear.

  —That time is not yet, and our eyes are now:

  Twenty-five is a time to move away.

  Late on the perilous wood the son flies low.

  The projection of the tower on the pine

  Wavers. The wind will fan and force the fire

  Streaming across our ditches to find wood.

  All that someone has wished or understood

  Is fuel to the holocaust he lives;

  It spreads, it is the famine of his desire,

  The tongue teeth eyes of your will and of mine.

  What then to praise, what love, what look to have?

  The animals who lightless live, alone

  And dark die. We await the rising moon.

  When the moon lifts, lagging winter moon,

  Its white face over time where the sun shone

  Gold once, we have a work to do, a grave

  At last for the honourable and exhausted man.

  Detroit, 1940

  The Traveller

  They pointed me out on the highway, and they said

  ‘That man has a curious way of holding his head.’

  They pointed me out on the beach; they said ‘That man

  Will never become as we are, try as he can.’

  They pointed me out at the station, and the guard

  Looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.

  I took the same train that the others took,

  To the same place. Were it not for that look

  And those words, we were all of us the same.

  I studied merely maps. I tried to name

  The effects of motion on the travellers,

  I watched the couple I could see, the curse

  And blessings of that couple, their destination,

  The deception practised on them at the station,

  Their courage. When the train stopped and they knew

  The end of their journey, I descended too.

  The Ball Poem

  What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,

  What, what is he to do? I saw it go

  Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then

  Merrily over—there it is in the water!

  No use to say ‘O there are other balls’:

  An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy

  As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down

  All his young days into the harbour where

  His ball went. I would not intrude on him,

  A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now

  He senses first responsibility

  In a world of possessions. People will take balls,

  Balls will be lost always, little boy,

  And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.

  He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,

  The epistemology of loss, how to stand up

  Knowing what every man must one day know

  And most know many days, how to stand up

  And gradually light returns to the street,

  A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,

  Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark

  Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,

  I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move

  With all that move me, under the water

  Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

  Fare Well

  Motions of waking trouble winter air,

  I wonder, and his face as it were forms

  Solemn, canorous, under the howled alarms,—

  The eyes shadowed and shut.

  Certainly for this sort of thing it is very late,

  I shudder, while my love longs and I pour

  My bright eyes towards the moving shadow . . where?

  Out, like a plucked gut.r />
  What has been taken away will not return,

  I take it, whether upon the crouch of night

  Or for my mountain need to share a morning’s light,—

  No! I am alone.

  What has been taken away should not have been shown,

  I complain, torturing, and then withdrawn.

  After so long, can I still long so and burn,

  Imperishable son?

  O easy the phoenix in the tree of the heart,

  Each in its time, his twigs and spices fixes

  To make a last nest, and marvellously relaxes,—

  Out of the fire, weak peep! . .

  Father I fought for Mother, sleep where you sleep!

  I slip into a snowbed with no hurt

  Where warm will warm be warm enough to part

  Us. As I sink, I weep.

  II

  The Spinning Heart

  The fireflies and the stars our only light,

  We rock, watching between the roses night

  If we could see the roses. We cannot.

  Where do the fireflies go by day, what eat?

  What categories shall we use tonight?

  The day was an exasperating day,

  The day in history must hang its head

  For the foul letters many women got,

  Appointments missed, men dishevelled and sad

  Before their mirrors trying to be proud.

  But now (we say) the sweetness of the night

  Will hide our imperfections from our sight,

  For nothing can be angry or astray,

  No man unpopular, lonely, or beset,

  Where half a yellow moon hangs from a cloud.

  Spinning however and balled up in space

  All hearts, desires, pewter and honeysuckle,

  What can be known of the individual face?

  To the continual drum-beat of the blood

  Mesh sea and mountain recollection, flame,

  Motives in the corridor, touch by night,

  Violent touch, and violence in rooms;

  How shall we reconcile in any light

  This blow and the relations that it wrecked?

  Crescent the pressures on the singular act

  Freeze it at last into its season, place,

  Until the flood and disorder of Spring.

  To Easterfield the court’s best bore, defining

  Space tied into a sailor’s reef, our praise:

  He too is useful, he is part of this,

  Inimitable, tangible, post-human,

  And Theo’s disappointment has a place,

  An item in that metamorphosis

  The horrible coquetry of aging women.

  Our superstitions barnacle our eyes

  To the tide, the coming good; or has it come?—

  Insufficient upon the beaches of the world

  To drown that complex and that bestial drum.

  Triumphant animals,—upon the rest

  Bearing down hard, brooding, come to announce

  The causes and directions of all this

  Biting and breeding,—how will all your sons

  Discover what you, assisted or alone,

  Staring and sweating for seventy years,

  Could never discover, the thing itself?

  Your fears,

  Fidelity, and dandelions grown

  As big as elephants, your morning lust

  Can neither name nor control. No time for shame,

  Whippoorwill calling, excrement falling, time

  Rushes like a madman forward. Nothing can be known.

  On the London Train

  Despite the lonesome look

  The man in the corner has,

  Across the compartment,

  Doubtless a dozen daze

  Daily their eyes on him intent

  And fancy him beside a brook,

  Their arms with his laced,

  Holding him fast.

  Whilst he for some virgin

  Endures the vacant night

  Without rest, and would go

  On bare knees, eyes shut tight,

  To Tomsk or San Diego

  If she’d but let him in,

  Bind his hurt knees, or say

  ‘There is a doctor down the way.’

  So it is and has been . .

  Summon an old lover’s ghost,

  He’ll swear no man has lied

  Who spoke of the painful and most

  Embarrassing ordeal this side

  Satisfaction,—while the green

  Difficulties later are

  More than Zeus could bear.

  Austere in a sheltered place

  The sea-shell puzzles Destiny,

  Who set us, man and beast

  And bird, in extremity

  To love and twig a nest.

  The frown on the great face

  Is recompense too little for

  Who suffer on the shore.

  Caravan

  The lady in her silver-

  grey spectacular

  Dressing-room prepares,

  Twisting at the mirror,

  Of son and daughter the careers.

  Also in the evening

  He who collects dung

  Conjures an August moon

  Where he may once bring

  Her flushed and salt, supine.

  The blue vase having final

  Wit glitters fragile

  Until at the horizon

  To sky and sea all

  Divides, throwing off season.

  Thus kept delicately

  In appalling storm the

  Buds will begin again

  Their white difficulty

  To the mature and green.

  Waves, guilt, all winter tears

  Draw tingling nearer

  And hang a glass for apparition . .

  As the words here are

  At work upon salvation.

  The Possessed

  This afternoon, discomfortable dead

  Drift into doorways, lounge, across the bridge,

  Whittling memory at the water’s edge,

  And watch. This is what you inherited.

  Random they are, but hairy, for they chafe

  All in their eye, enlarging like a slide;

  Spectral as men once met or crucified,

  And kind. Until the sun sets you are safe.

  A prey to your most awkward reflection,

  Loose-limbed before the fire you sit appalled.

  And think that by your error you have called

  These to you. Look! the light will soon be gone.

  Excited see from the window the men fade

  In the twilight; reappear two doors down.

  Suppose them well acquainted with the town

  Who built it. Do you fumble in the shade?

  The key was lost, remember, yesterday,

  Or stolen,—undergraduates perhaps;

  But all men are their colleagues, and eclipse

  Very like dusk. It is too late to pray.

  There was a time crepuscular was mild,

  The hour for tea, acquaintances, and fall

  Away of all day’s difficulties, all

  Discouragement. Weep, you are not a child.

  The equine hour rears, no further friend,

  Intolerant, foam-lathered, pregnant with

  Mysterious grave watchers in their wrath

  Let into tired Troy. You are near the end.

  Midsummer Common loses its last gold,

  And grey is there. The sun slants down behind

  A certain cinema, and the world is blind

  But more dangerous. It is growing cold.

  Light all the lights, heap wood upon the fire

  To banish shadow. Draw the curtains tight.

  But sightless eyes will lean through, and wide night

  Darken this room of yours. As you desire.

  Think on your sins with all intensity.

  The men are o
n the stair, they will not wait.

  There is a paper-knife to penetrate

  Heart & guilt together. Do it quickly.

  Parting as Descent

  The sun rushed up the sky; the taxi flew;

  There was a kind of fever on the clock

  That morning. We arrived at Waterloo

  With time to spare and couldn’t find my track.

  The bitter coffee in a small café

  Gave us our conversation. When the train

  Began to move, I saw you turn away

  And vanish, and the vessels in my brain

  Burst, the train roared, the other travellers

  In flames leapt, burning on the tilted air

  Che si cruccia, I heard the devils curse

  And shriek with joy in that place beyond prayer.

  Cloud and Flame

  The summer cloud in summer blue

  Capricious from the wind will run,

  Laughing into the tender sun,

  Knowing the work that it must do.

  When One says liberty is vain

  The cloud will come to summer rain.

  After his college failure, Swift

  Eight hours a day against his age

  Began to document his rage

  Towards the decades of strife and shift.

  From claims that pride or party made

  He kept in an exacting shade.

  Cornford in a retreat was lost;

  A stray shot like an aimless joke

  His learning, spirit, at one stroke

  Dispersed, his generation’s cost.

  The harvest value of his head

  Is less than cloud, is less than bread.

  The One recalls the many burn,

  Prepared or unprepared: one flame

  Within a shade can strike its name,

  Another sees the cloud return.

  And Thirkill saw the Christ’s head shake

  At Hastings, by the Bloody Lake.

  Letter to His Brother

  The night is on these hills, and some can sleep.

  Some stare into the dark, some walk.

  Only the sound of glasses and of talk,

  Of cracking logs, and of a few who weep,

  Comes on the night wind to my waking ears.

  Your enemies and mine are still,

  None works upon us either good or ill:

  Mint by the stream, tree-frogs, are travellers.

  What shall I say for anniversary?

  At Dachau rubber blows forbid

  And Becket’s brains upon the pavement spread

  Forbid my trust, my hopeful prophecy.

  Prediction if I make, I violate

  The just expectancy of youth,—