Berryman’s Sonnets Read online

  *It is that 1967 edition of Berryman’s Sonnets we reprint here. A version called “Sonnets to Chris,” edited by Charles Thornbury and included in John Berryman: Collected Poems, 1937–1971, combined the 1940s manuscript versions (footnoting Berryman’s own subsequent edits of these) with the later poems.

  Note

  These Sonnets, which were written many years ago, have nothing to do, of course, with my long poem in progress, The Dream Songs. Sonnet 25 appeared in the fortieth-anniversary number of Poetry; the others are unprinted.

  J. B.

  Ballsbridge, Dublin

  October 8th, 1966

  HE MADE, A THOUSAND YEARS AGO, A-MANY SONGS

  FOR AN EXCELLENT LADY, WIF WHOM HE WAS IN WUV,

  SHALL NOW HE PUBLISH THEM?

  HAS HE THE RIGHT, UPON THAT OLD YOUNG MAN,

  TO BARE HIS NERVOUS SYSTEM

  & DISPLAY ALL THE CLOUDS AGAIN AS THEY WERE ABOVE?

  AS A FRIEND OF THE COURT I WOULD SAY, LET THEM DIE.

  WHAT DOES ANYTHING MATTER? BURN THEM UP,

  PUT THEM IN A BANK VAULT.

  I THOUGHT OF THAT AND WHEN I RETURNED TO THIS COUNTRY

  I TOOK THEM OUT AGAIN. THE ORIGINAL FAULT

  WILL NOT BE UNDONE BY FIRE.

  THE ORIGINAL FAULT WAS WHETHER WICKEDNESS

  WAS SOLUBLE IN ART. HISTORY SAYS IT IS,

  JACQUES MARITAIN SAYS IT IS,

  BARELY. SO FREE THEM TO THE WINDS THAT PLAY,

  LET BOYS & GIRLS WITH THESE OLD SONGS HAVE HOLIDAY

  IF THEY FEEL LIKE IT.

  [ 1 ]

  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 shut.

  Errors of order! Luck lies with the bone,

  Who rushed (and rests) to meet your small mouth, risk

  Your teeth irregular and passionate.

  [ 2 ]

  Your shining—where?—rays my wide room with gold;

  Grey rooms all day, green streets I visited,

  Blazed with you possible; other voices bred

  Yours in my quick ear; when the rain was cold

  Shiver it might make shoulders I behold

  Sloping through kite-slipt hours, tingling. I said

  A month since, ‘I will see that cloud-gold head,

  Those eyes lighten, and go by’: then your thunder rolled.

  Drowned all sound else, I come driven to learn

  Fearful and happy, deafening rumours of

  The complete conversations of the angels, now

  As nude upon some warm lawn softly turn

  Toward me the silences of your breasts . . My vow! . .

  One knee unnerves the voyeur sky enough.

  [ 3 ]

  Who for those ages ever without some blood

  Plumped for a rose and plucked it through its fence? . .

  Till the canny florist, amorist of cents,

  Unpawned the peppery apple, making it good

  With boredom, back to its branch, as it seems he could,—

  Vending the thornless rose. We think our rents

  Paid, and we nod. O but ghosts crowd, dense,

  Down in the dark shop bare stems with their Should

  Not! Should Not sleepwalks where no clocks agree!

  So I was not surprised, though I trembled, when

  This morning groping your hand moaning your name

  I heard distinctly drip . . somewhere . . and see

  Coiled in our joys flicker a tongue again,

  The fall of your hair a cascade of white flame.

  [ 4 ]

  Ah when you drift hover before you kiss

  More my mouth yours now, lips grow more to mine

  Teeth click, suddenly your tongue like a mulled wine

  Slides fire,—I wonder what the point of life is.

  Do, down this night when I adore you, Lise,

  So I forsake the blest assistant shine

  Of deep-laid maps I made for summits, swine-

  enchanted lover, loafing in the abyss?

  Loaf hardly, while my nerves dance, while the gale

  Moans like your hair down here. But I lie still,

  Strengthless and smiling under a maenad rule.

  Whose limbs worked once, whose imagination’s grail

  Many or some would nourish, must now I fill

  My strength with desire, my cup with your tongue,

  no more Melpomene’s, but Erato’s fool? . .

  [ 5 ]

  The poet hunched, so, whom the worlds admire,

  Rising as I came in; greeted me mildly,

  Folded again, and our discourse was easy,

  While he hid in his skin taut as a wire,

  Considerate as grace, a candid pyre

  Flaring some midday shore; he took more tea,

  I lit his cigarette . . once I lit Yeats’ as he

  Muttered before an Athenaeum fire

  The day Dylan had tried to slow me drunk

  Down to the great man’s club. But you laught just now

  Letting me out, you bubbled ‘Liar’ and

  Laught . . Well, but thén my breast was empty, monk

  Of Yeatsian order: yesterday (truth now)

  Flooding blurred Eliot’s words sometimes,

  face not your face, hair not you blonde but iron.

  [ 6 ]

  Rackman and victim grind: sounds all these weeks

  Of seconds and hours and days not once are dumb,

  And has your footfall really not come

  Still? O interminable strength that leaks

  All day away alert . . I am who seeks

  As tautly now, whom the vague creakings strum

  Jangled this instant, as when the monstrous hum

  Your note began!—since when old silence spéaks.

  Deep down this building do I sometimes hear

  Below the sighs and flex of the travelling world

  Pyromaniacal whispers? . . Not to be

  They say would do us good . . easy . . the mere

  Lick and a promise of a sweet flame curled

  Fast on its wooden love: silence our plea.

  [ 7 ]

  I’ve found out why, that day, that suicide

  From the Empire State falling on someone’s car

  Troubled you so; and why we quarrelled. War,

  Illness, an accident, I can see (you cried)

  But not this: what a bastard, not spring wide! . .

  I said a man, life in his teeth, could care

  Not much just whom he spat it on . . and far

  Beyond my laugh we argued either side.

  ‘One has a right not to be fallen on! . .’

  (Our second meeting . . yellow you were wearing.)

  Voices of our resistance and desire!

  Did I divine then I must shortly run

  Crazy with need to fall on you, despairing?

  Did you bolt so, before it caught, our fire?

  [ 8 ]

  College of flunkeys, and a few gentlemen,

  Of whippersnappers and certain serious boys,

  Who better discriminates than I your noise

  From the lemon song and black light assertion

  Of the academies of eternity? . . Your fen—

  Yet it’s your fen yields this perfume I poise

  Full against Helen, and Isotta: toys

  To time’s late action in this girl. Again

  As first when I sat d
own amongst your trees

  I respect you and am moved by you! Hér you

  Taught not, nor could, but comrades of hers you have,

  She sleeps, she rouses, near you, near she frees

  Each morning her strange eyes, eyes that grey blue

  Not blue . . for your incurable sins some salve.

  [ 9 ]

  Great citadels whereon the gold sun falls

  Miss you O Lise sequestered to the West

  Which wears you Mayday lily at its breast,

  Part and not part, proper to balls and brawls,

  Plains, cities, or the yellow shore, not false

  Anywhere, free, native and Danishest

  Profane and elegant flower,—whom suggest

  Frail and not frail, blond rocks and madrigals.

  Once in the car (cave of our radical love)

  Your darker hair I saw than golden hair

  Above your thighs whiter than white-gold hair,

  And where the dashboard lit faintly your least

  Enlarged scene, O the midnight bloomed . . the East

  Less gorgeous, wearing you like a long white glove!

  [ 10 ]

  You in your stone home where the sycamore

  More than I see you sees you, where luck’s grass

  Smoothes your bare feet more often, even your glass

  Touches your hand and tips to your lips to pour

  Whatever is in it into you, through which door

  O moving softness do you just now pass—

  Your slippers’ prows curled, red and old—alas

  With what soft thought for me, at sea, and sore?

  Stone of our situation, iron and stone,

  Younger as days to years than the house, yet might

  Wé stare as little haggard with time’s roil . .

  Who in each other’s arms have lain—lie—one

  Bite like an animal, both do, pause, and bite,

  Shudder with joy, kiss . . the broad waters boil!

  [ 11 ]

  I expect you from the North. The path winds in

  Between the honeysuckle and the pines, among

  Poison ivy and small flowerless shrubs,

  Across the red-brown needle-bed. I sit

  Or smoking pace. A moment since, at six,

  Mist wrapped the knoll, but now birds like a gong

  Beat, greet the white-gold level shine. Wide-flung

  On a thousand greens the late slight rain is gleaming.

  A rabbit jumps a shrub. O my quick darling,

  Lie torpid so? Cars from the highway whine,

  Dawn’s trunks against the sun are black. I shiver.

  Your hair this fresh wind would—but I am starting.

  To what end does this easy and crystal light

  Dream on the flat leaves, emerald, and shimmer? . .

  [ 12 ]

  Mutinous armed & suicidal grind

  Fears on desires, a clutter humps a track,

  The body of expectation hangs down slack

  Untidy black; my love sweats like a rind;

  Parrots are yattering up the cagy mind,

  Jerking their circles . . you stood, a week back,

  By, I saw your foot with half my eye, I lack

  You . . the damned female’s yellow head swings blind.

  Cageless they’d grapple. O where, whose Martini

  Grows sweeter with my torment, wrung on toward

  The insomnia of eternity, loud graves!

  Hölderlin on his tower sang like the sea

  More you adored that day than your harpsichord,

  Troubled and drumming, tempting and empty waves.

  [ 13 ]

  I lift—lift you five States away your glass,

  Wide of this bar you never graced, where none

  Ever I know came, where what work is done

  Even by these men I know not, where a brass

  Police-car sign peers in, wet strange cars pass,

  Soiled hangs the rag of day out over this town,

  A juke-box brains air where I drink alone,

  The spruce barkeep sports a toupee alas—

  My glass I lift at six o’clock, my darling,

  As you plotted . . Chinese couples shift in bed,

  We shared today not even filthy weather,

  Beasts in the hills their tigerish love are snarling,

  Suddenly they clash, I blow my short ash red,

  Grey eyes light! and we have our drink together.

  [ 14 ]

  Moths white as ghosts among these hundreds cling

  Small in the porchlight . . I am one of yours,

  Doomed to a German song’s stale metaphors,

  The breasty thimble-rigger hums my wring.

  I am your ghost, this pale ridiculous thing

  Walks while you slump asleep; ouija than morse

  Reaches me better; wide on Denmark’s moors

  I loiter, and when you slide your eyes I swing.

  The billiard ball slammed in the kibitzer’s mouth

  Doctor nor dentist could relieve him of,

  Injecting, chipping . . too he clampt it harder . .

  Squalor and leech of curiosity’s truth

  Fork me this diamond meal to gag on love,

  Grinning with passion, your astonished martyr.

  [ 15 ]

  What was Ashore, then? . . Cargoed with Forget,

  My ship runs down a midnight winter storm

  Between whirlpool and rock, and my white love’s form

  Gleams at the wheel, her hair streams. When we met

  Seaward, Thought frank & guilty to each oar set

  Hands careless of port as of the waters’ harm.

  Endless a wet wind wears my sail, dark swarm

  Endless of sighs and veering hopes, love’s fret.

  Rain of tears, real, mist of imagined scorn,

  No rest accords the fraying shrouds, all thwart

  Already with mistakes, foresight so short.

  Muffled in capes of waves my clear sighs, torn,

  Hitherto most clear,—Loyalty and Art.

  And I begin now to despair of port.

  (AFTER PETRARCH & WYATT)

  [ 16 ]

  Thrice, or I moved to sack, I saw you: how

  Without siege laid I can as simply tell

  As whether below the dreams of Astrophel

  Lurks local truth some scholars would allow

  And others will deny in ours! O now

  The punishing girl met after Toynbee’s bell

  Tolled for us all I see too bloody well

  To say why then I cheapened a blind bow.

  Paid at the shore eyes, ears, a shaking hand,

  A pull of blood; behind you coming back,

  Already holding, began to be borne away . .

  Held. After Mozart, saw you bend and stand

  Beside my seat . . held. I recovered. . . Rack

  The consumer! I rushed out Rockwell Street one day.

  [ 17 ]

  The Old Boys’ blazers like a Mardi-Gras

  Burn orange, border black, their dominoes

  Stagger the green day down the tulip rows

  Of the holiday town. Ever I passioned, ah

  Ten years, to go where by her golden bra

  Some sultry girl is caught, to dip my nose

  Or dance where jorums clash and King Rex’ hose

  Slip as he rules the tantrum’s orchestra,

  Liriodendron, and the Mystick Krewe!

  Those images of Mardi-Gras’ sweet weather

  Beckoned—but how has their invitation ceased?

  . . The bells brawl, calling (I cannot find you

  With me there) back us who were not together.

  Our forward Lent set in before our feast.

  [ 18 ]

  You, Lise, contrite I never thought to see,

  Whom nothing fazes, no crise can disconcert,

  Who calm cross crises all year, flouting, alert,


  A reckless lady, in whom alone agree

  Of bristling states your war and peace; only

  Your knuckle broke with smashing objects, curt

  Classic dislike, your flowing love, expert

  Flat stillness on hot sand, display you wholly.

  . . And can you do what you are sorry for? . .

  ‘I’ll pin you down and put a biscuit on you’

  Your childhood hissed: you didn’t: just this side

  Idolatry, I cannot see you sor-

  ry, darling, no! what other women do

  And lie or weep for, flash in your white stride.

  [ 19 ]

  You sailed in sky-high, with your speech askew

  But marvellous, and talked like mad for hours,

  Slamming and blessing; you transported us,

  I’d never heard you talk so, and I knew—

  Humbler and more proud—you each time undo

  My kitcat but to cram it with these powers

  You bare and bury; suddenly, late then, as

  Your best ‘burnt offering’ took me back with you.

  No jest but jostles truth! . . I burn . . am led

  Burning to slaughter, passion like a sieve

  Disbands my circling blood the priestess slights.

  —‘Remorse does not suit you at all’ he said,

  Rightly; but what he ragged, and might forgive,

  I shook for, lawless, empty, without rights.

  [ 20 ]

  Presidential flags! and the General is here,

  Shops have let out, two bands are raising hell

  O hell is empty and Knowlton Street is well,

  The little devils shriek, an angelic tear

  Falls somewhere, so (but I laugh) would mine, I fear

  The Secret Service rang the rising bell