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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Note
IV
78. Op. posth. no. 1
79. Op. posth. no. 2
80. Op. posth. no. 3
81. Op. posth. no. 4
82. Op. posth. no. 5
83. Op. posth. no. 6
84. Op. posth. no. 7
85. Op. posth. no. 8
86. Op. posth. no. 9
87. Op. posth. no. 10
88. Op. posth. no. 11
89. Op. posth. no. 12
90. Op. posth. no. 13
91. Op. posth. no. 14
V
92. Room 231: the forth week
93. General Fatigue
94. Ill lay he long
95. The surly cop
96. Under the table
97. Henry of Donnybrook
98. I met a junior
99. Temples
100. How this woman came
101. A shallow lake
102. The sunburnt terraces
103. I consider a song
104. Welcome, grinned Henry
105. As a kid
106. 28 July
107. Three ’coons come at his garbage
108. Sixteen below.
109. She mentioned ‘worthless’
110. It was the blue & plain ones.
111. I miss him.
112. My framework is broken
113. or Amy Vladeck or Riva Freifeld
114. Henry in trouble
115. Her properties
116. Through the forest, followed
117. Disturbed, when Henry’s love
118. He wondered: Do I love?
119. Fresh-shaven, past months
120. Foes I sniff
121. Grief is fatiguing.
122. He published his girl’s bottom
123. Dapples my floor the eastern sun
124. Behold I bring you tidings
125. Bards freezing, naked
126. A Thurn
127. Again, his friend’s death
128. A hemorrhage of his left ear
129. Thin as a sheet
130. When I saw my friend
131. Come touch me baby
132. A Small Dream
133. As he grew famous
134. Sick at 6
135. I heard said
136. Whíle his wife earned
137. Many’s the dawn
138. Combat Assignment
139. Green grieves the Prince
140. Henry is vanishing.
141. One was down on the Mass.
142. The animal moment, when
143. —That’s enough of that
144. My orderly tender
145. Also I love him:
VI
146. These lovely motions of the air
147. Henry’s mind grew blacker
148. Glimmerings
149. This world is gradually
150. He had followers
151. Bitter & bleary
152. I bid you then
153. I’m cross with god
154. Flagrant his young male beauty
155. I can’t get him out of my mind
156. I give in.
157. Ten Songs
158. Being almost ready now
159. Panic & shock, together.
160. Halfway to death
161. Draw on your resources.
162. Vietnam
163. Stomach & arm
164. Three limbs
165. An orange moon
166. I have strained everything
167. Henry’s Mail
168. The Old Poor
169. Books drugs
170. —I can’t read any more
171. Go, ill-sped book
172. Your face broods from my table
173. In mem: R. P. Blackmur
174. Kyrie Eleison
175. Old King Cole
176. All that hair
177. Am tame now.
178. Above the lindens
179. A terrible applause
180. The Translator—I
181. The Translator—II
182. Buoyant, chockful of stories
183. News of God
184. Failed as a makar
185. The drill was after
186. There is a swivelly grace
187. Them lady poets
188. There is a kind of undetermined hair
189. The soft small snow
190. The doomed young envy the old
191. The autumn breeze
192. Love me love me
193. Henry’s friend’s throat
194. If all must hurt at once
195. I stalk my mirror
196. I see now all these deaths
197. (I saw in my dream
198. —I held all solid
199. I dangle on the rungs
200. I am interested & amazed
201. Hung by a thread
202. With shining strides
203. Nothing!—
204. Henry, weak at keyboard music
205. Come & dance
206. Come again closer
207. —How are you?
208. His mother wrote good news
209. Henry lay cold & golden
210. —Mr Blackmur, what are the holy cities
211. Forgoing the Andes
212. With relief to public action
213. Wan shone my sun
214. Which brandished goddess
215. Took Henry tea down
216. Scads a good eats
217. Some remember
218. Fortune gave him to know
219. So long? Stevens
220. —If we’re not Jews
221. I poured myself out thro’ my tips.
222. It was a difficult crime
223. It’s wonderful the way
224. Lonely in his great age
225. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt
226. Phantastic thunder
227. Profoundly troubled
228. The Father of the Mill
229. They laid their hands on Henry
230. There are voices, voices.
231. Ode
232. They work not well on all
233. Cantatrice
234. The Carpenter’s Son
235. Tears Henry shed
236. When Henry swung
237. When in the flashlights’ flare
238. Henry’s Programme for God
239. Am I a bad man?
240. Air with thought thick
241. Father being the loneliest word
242. About that ‘me’
243. An undead morning.
244. Calamity Jane lies very still
245. A Wake-Song
246. Flaps, on winter’s first day
247. Henry walked
248. Snowy of her breasts
249. Bushes lay low.
250. Sad sights.
251. Walking, Flying—I
252. Walking, Flying—II
253. Walking, Flying—III
254. Mrs Thomas, Mrs Harris
255. My twin, the nameless one
256. Henry rested
257. The thunder & the flaw
258. Scarlatti spurts his wit
259. Does then
our rivalry
260. Tides of dreadful creation
261. Restless, as once in love
262. The tenor of the line
263. You couldn’t bear to grow old
264. I always wanted
265. I don’t know one damned butterfly
266. Dinch me, dark God
267. Can Louis die?
268. Henry, absent on parade
269. Acres of spirits
270. This fellow keeps on
272. The subject was her.
273. Survive—exist—
274. It’s lovely just here now
275. July 11
276. Henry’s Farewell—I
277. Henry’s Farewell—II
278. Henry’s Farewell—III
VII
279. Leaving behind
280. Decision taken
281. The Following Gulls
282. Richard & Randall
283. Shrouded the great stars
284. The hand I shook
285. Much petted Henry
286. So Henry’s enemy’s lost
287. A best word across a void
288. In neighbourhoods
289. It is, after all her!
290. Why is Ireland
291. Cold & golden
292. The Irish sky is raining
293. What gall had he in him
294. I broke a mirror
295. You dear you
296. Of grace & fear
297. Golden his mail came
298. Henry in transition
299. The Irish have
300. Henry Comforted
301. Shifted his mind
302. Cold & golden … The forest tramped
303. Three in Heaven I hope
304. Maris & Valerie
305. Like the sunburst
306. The Danish priest has horns
307. The Irish monk with horns
308. An Instructions to Critics
309. Fallen leaves & litter.
310. His gift receded.
311. Famisht Henry ate
312. I have moved to Dublin
313. The Irish sunshine is lovely but
314. Penniless, ill, abroad
315. Behind me twice
316. Blow upon blow
317. My mother threw a tantrum
318. Happy & idle
319. Having escaped
320. Steps almost unfamiliar
321. O land of Connolly & Pearse
322. I gave my love a cookie
323. Churchill was ever-active
324. An Elegy for W. C. W., the lovely man
325. Control it now
326. My right foot being colder
327. Freud was some wrong about dreams
328. —I write with my stomach
329. Henry on LSD
330. The Twiss is a tidy bundle
331. This is the third.
332. Trunks & impedimenta.
333. And now I’ve sent
334. Thrums up from nowhere
335. In his complex investigations
336. Henry as a landlord
337. The mind is incalculable
338. According to the Annals
339. A maze of drink said
340. The secret is not praise.
341. The Dialogue, aet. 51
342. Fan-mail from foreign countries
343. Another directory form to be corrected
344. Herbert Park, Dublin
345. Anarchic Henry
346. Henry’s very rich American friends
347. The day was dark.
348. 700 years?
349. The great Bosch in the Prado
350. All the girls
351. Animal Henry sat reading
352. The Cabin
353. These massacres of the superior peoples
354. The only people in the world
355. Slattery’s, in Ballsbridge
356. With fried excitement
357. Henry’s pride in his house
358. The Gripe
359. In sleep, of a heart attack
360. The universe has gifted me
361. The Armada Song
362. And now I meet you
363. I cast as feminine
364. There is one book
365. Henry, a foreigner
366. Chilled in this Irish pub
367. Henry’s Crisis
368. At a gallop through his gates
369. I threw myself out
370. Henry saw
371. Henry’s Guilt
373. My eyes
374. Drum Henry out, called some.
375. His Helplessness
376. Christmas again
377. Father Hopkins
378. The beating of a horse
379. To the edge of Europe
380. From the French Hospital in New York, 901
381. Cave-man Henry
382. At Henry’s bier
383. It brightens with power
384. The marker slants
385. My daughter’s heavier
Books by John Berryman
Copyright
To Mark Van Doren, and to the sacred memory of Delmore Schwartz
NO INTERESTING PROJECT CAN BE EMBARKED ON WITHOUT FEAR. I SHALL BE SCARED TO DEATH HALF THE TIME.
Sir Francis Chichester in Sydney
FOR MY PART I AM ALWAYS FRIGHTENED, AND VERY MUCH SO. I FEAR THE FUTURE OF ALL ENGAGEMENTS.
Gordon in Khartoum
I AM PICKT UP AND SORTED TO A PIP. MY IMAGINATION IS A MONASTERY AND I AM ITS MONK.
Keats to Shelley
HE WENT AWAY AND NEVER SAID GOODBYE.
I COULD READ HIS LETTERS BUT I SURE CAN’T READ HIS MIND.
I THOUGHT HE’S LOVIN ME BUT HE WAS LEAVIN ALL THE TIME.
NOW I KNOW THAT MY TRUE LOVE WAS BLIND.
Victoria Spivey?
Note: THIS VOLUME, comprising Books IV, V, VI, VII, continues and concludes the poem, called The Dream Songs, begun in 77 Dream Songs. The poems in this volume were written over a period of eleven years.
My most deep thanks are due to the Ingraham Merrill Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for generous help without which the poem would probably never have been finished, at least in its present form. My thanks are due also to the President and the Regents of the University of Minnesota, which awarded me a sabbatical leave at a critical moment in the composition. Acknowledgment is here made also to various editors who printed some of the Songs, especially to Mr Crook and Mr Hamilton of The Times Literary Supplement, which printed most of Book IV. British hospitality to foreign poetry, particularly American, makes a bright spot in a sickening century.
Some of the Songs are dedicated to friends: Ellen Siegelman (92), Philip Siegelman (180–1), Dr. A. Boyd Thomes (184), Maris Thomes (239, 295), Robert Lowell (287), Adrienne Rich (294, 307, 362), Valerie Trueblood (286, 315), William Meredith (320), Howard Nemerov (335), Victoria Bay (344), Robert Giroux (364).
It is idle to reply to critics, but some of the people who addressed themselves to the 77 Dream Songs went so desperately astray (one apologized about it in print, but who ever sees apologies?) that I permit myself one word. The poem then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American in early middle age sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss and talks about himself sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third, sometimes even in the second; he has a friend, never named, who addresses him as Mr Bones and variants thereof. Requiescant in pace.
J.B.
IV
78
Op. posth. no. 1
Darkened his eye, his wild smile disappeared,
inapprehensible his studies grew,
nourished he less & less
his subject body with good food
& rest,
something bizarre about Henry, slowly sheared
off, unlike you & you,
smaller & smaller, till in question stood
his eyeteeth and one block of memories
These were enough for him
implying commands from upstairs & from down,
Walt’s ‘orbic flex,’ triads of Hegel would
incorporate, if you please,
into the know-how of the American bard
embarrassed Henry heard himself a-being,
and the younger Stephen Crane
of a powerful memory, of pain,
these stood the ancestors, relaxed & hard,
whilst Henry’s parts were fleeing.
79
Op. posth. no. 2
Whence flew the litter whereon he was laid?
Of what heroic stuff was warlock Henry made?
and questions of that sort
perplexed the bulging cosmos, O in short
was sandalwood in good supply when he
flared out of history
& the obituary in The New York Times
into the world of generosity
creating the air where are
& can be, only, heroes? Statues & rhymes
signal his fiery Passage, a mountainous sea,
the occlusion of a star:
anything afterward, of high lament,
let too his giant faults appear, as sent
together with his virtues down
and let this day be his, throughout the town,
region & cosmos, lest he freeze our blood
with terrible returns.
80
Op. posth. no. 3
It’s buried at a distance, on my insistence, buried.
Weather’s severe there, which it will not mind.
I miss it.
O happies before & during & between the times it got married.
I hate the love of leaving it behind,
deteriorating & hopeless that.
The great Uh climbed above me, far above me,
doing the north face, or behind it. Does He love me?
over, & flout.
Goodness is bits of outer God. The house-guest
(slimmed-down) with one eye open & one breast
out.
Slimmed-down from by-blow; adoptive-up; was white.
A daughter of a friend. His soul is a sight.
—Mr Bones, what’s all about?
Girl have a little: what be wrong with that?
Yóu free? —Down some many did descend
from the abominable & semi-mortal Cat.
81
Op. posth. no. 4
He loom’ so cagey he say ‘Leema beans’
and measured his intake to the atmosphere
of that fairly stable country.
His ear hurt. Left. The rock-cliffs, a mite sheer