Read Online Berryman’s Sonnets by John Berryman - Free Book Online

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