Berryman’s Sonnets by John Berryman Read Free Book Online Page A

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 travellers 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