Berryman’s Sonnets (6 page)

A pine-cone calmed here in a red-brown sea

Collects its straying forces now and listens:

A veery calls; south, a slow whistle loosens

My lone control. The flat sun finally

Flaws through the evergreen grove, and can be he—

If Lise comes—our renewed love lights and christens.

Tarry today? . . weeks the abandoned knoll

And I have waited. The needles are soft . . feel.

The village bell, or the college, tells me seven.

Much longer not sustains—will it again?—

Castaway time I scrabble tooth and nail,

I crush a cigarette black, and go down.

[ 65 ]

Once when they found me, some refrain
‘Quoi faire?’

Striking my hands, they say repeatedly

I muttered; although I could hear and see

I knew no one.—I am silent in my chair,

And stronger and more cold is my despair

At last, for I have come into a country

Whose vivid Queen upon no melody

Admits me.
Manchmal glaub ich, ich kann nicht mehr.

Song follows song, the chatterer to the fire

Would follow soon . . Deep in Ur’s royal pits

Sit still the courtly bodies, a little bowl

By each, attired to voluntary blitz . .

In Shub-ad’s grave the fingers of a girl

Were touching still, when they found her, the strings of her lyre.

[ 66 ]

Astronomies and slangs to find you, dear,

Star, art-breath, crowner, conscience! and to chart

For kids unborn your distal beauty, part

On part that startles, till you blaze more clear

And witching than your sister Venus here

To a late age can, though her senior start

Is my new insomnia,—swift sleepless art

To draw you even . . and to draw you near.

I prod our English: cough me up a word,

Slip me an epithet will justify

My daring fondle, fumble of far fire

Crackling nearby, unreasonable as a surd,

A flash of light, an insight: I am the shy

Vehicle of your cadmium shine . . your choir.

[ 67 ]

Faith like the warrior ant swarming, enslaving

Or griding others, you gave me soft as dew,

My darling, drawing me suddenly into you,

Your arms’ strong kindness at my back, your weaving

Thighs agile to me, white teeth in your heaving

Hard, your face bright and dark, back, as we screw

Our lives together—twin convulsion—blue

Crests curl, to rest . . again the ivy waving.

Faiths other fall. Afterwards I kissed you

So (Lise) long, and your eyes so waxed, marine,

Wider I drowned . . light to their surface drawn

Down met the wild light (derelict weeks I missed you

Leave me forever) upstreaming; never-seen,

Your radiant glad soul surfaced in the dawn.

[ 68 ]

Where the lane from the highway swerves the first drops fell

Like lead, I bowed my head and drifted up.

Now in the grove they pat like footsteps, but

Not hers, Despair’s. In slant lines sentinel

Silver and thin, it rains so into Hell,

Unvisited these thousand years. I grope

A little in the wind after a hope

For sun before she wakes . . all might be well.

All might yet be well . . I wandered just

Down to the upper lane now, the sky was clearing,

And as I scrawl, the sun breaks. Ah, what use?

She said if rain,
no,
—in vain self-abuse

I lie a fairy well! cloud disappearing

Not lonelier, leaving like me: we must.

[ 69 ]

For you am I collared O to quit my dear

My sandy-haired mild good and most beautiful

Most helpless and devoted wife? I pull

Crazy away from this; but too from her

Resistlessly I draw off, months have, far

And quarrelling—irrelation—numb and dull

Dead Sea with tiny aits . . Love at the full

Had wavered, seeing, foresuffering us here.

Unhappy all her lone strange life until

Somehow I friended it. And the Master catches

Me strongly from behind, and clucks, and tugs.

He has, has he? my heart-relucting will.

She spins on silent and the needle scratches.

—This all, Lise? and stark kisses, stealthy hugs?

[ 70 ]

Under Scorpion both, back in the Sooner State

Where the dry winds winnow the soul, we both were born,

And we have cast our origin, and the Horn

Neither has frankly scanted, others imitate

Us; and we have come a long way, late

For depth enough, betimes enough for torn

Hangnails of nerves and innocent love, we turn

Together in this vize lips, eyes, our Fate.

When the cam slid, the prodigious fingers tightened

And we began to fuse, weird afternoon

Early in May (the Third), we both were frightened;

A month we writhed, in sudden love like a scrimmage;

June’s wide loss worse; the fortnight after June

Worst. Vize and woe worked us this perfect image!

[ 71 ]

Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying

Wafer and wine to the human wound, we laid

Ourselves to cure ourselves down: I’m afraid

Our vestments wanted, but Francis’ friends were crying

In the nave of pines, sun-satisfied, and flying

Subtle as angels about the barricade

Boughs made over us, deep in a bed half made

Needle-soft, half the sea of our simultaneous dying.

‘Death is the mother of beauty.’ Awry no leaf

Shivering with delight, we die to be well . .

Careless with sleepy love, so long unloving.

What if our convalescence must be brief

As we are, the matin meet the passing bell? . .

About our pines our sister, wind, is moving.

[ 72 ]

A Cambridge friend put in,—one whom I used

To pay small rope at chess to, who in vain

Luffed up to free a rook,—and through the strain

Of ten-year-old talk cocktails partly loosed

I forgot you, forgot you, for the first

Hour in months of watches . . Mozart’s pain

I heard then, in the cranny of the hurricane,

As since the chrisom caught me up immersed

I have heard nothing but the sough of the sea

And wide upon the open sea my friend

The sea-wind crying, out of its cave to roam

No more, no more . . until my memory

Swung you back like a lock: I sing the end,

Tolerant Aeolus to call me home.

[ 73 ]

Demand me again what Kafka’s riddles mean,

For I am the penal colony’s prime scribe:

From solitary, firing against the tribe

Uncanny judgments ancient and unclean.

I am the officer flat on my own machine,

Priest of the one Law no despair can bribe,

On whom the mort-prongs hover to inscribe

‘I FELL IN LOVE’ . . O none of this foreseen,

Adulteries and divorces cold I judged

And strapped the tramps flat. Now the harrow trembles

Down, a strap snaps, I wave—out of control—

To you to change the legend has not budged

These years: make the machine grave on me (stumbles

Someone to latch the strap) ‘I MET MY SOUL’.

[ 74 ]

All I did wrong, all the Grand Guignol years,

Tossed me here still able to touch you still.

I took the false turn on the fantastic hill

Continually, until the top appears.

Even my blind (last night) disordered tears

Conducted me to-morning. When I grew ill

Two years, I only taxed my doctors’ skill

To pass me to you fixed . . The damned sky clears

Into a decent sun (this week’s the worst

Ever I see-saw) half an hour: this town

My tomb becomes a kind of paradise . .

How then complain? Rain came with a burst,

Ridding the sky. Was it this evil clown

Or surviving lover you called to you? . .
twice.

18 July

[ 75 ]

Swarthy when young; who took the tonsure; sign,

His coronation, wangled, his name re-said

For euphony; off to courts fluttered, and fled;

Professorships refused; upon one line

Worked years; and then that genial concubine.

Seventy springs he read, and wrote, and read.

On the day of the year his people found him dead

I read his story. Anew I studied mine.

Also there was Laura and three-seventeen

Sonnets to something like her . . twenty-one years . .

He never touched her. Swirl our crimes and crimes.

Gold-haired (too), dark-eyed, ignorant of rimes

Was she? Virtuous? The old brume seldom clears.

—Two guilty and crepe-yellow months

       Lise! be our bright surviving actual scene.

[ 76 ]

The two plantations Greatgrandmother brought

My bearded General, back in a world would burn,

I thresh excited as I see return

Odd in this symbol you me last night taught . .

Your Two-fields rapt into the family ought

To save us: sensitivity, elegant, fern-

subtle, knit upon vigour enough to turn

A nation’s strong decline. I grind my thought

A bit more, and I bare the quick of the have

And have not, half have, less than half, O this

Fantasy of your gates ajar, gates barred.

Poaching and rack-rent do you hope will save

True to ourselves
us,
darling? owners, Lise!—

Heiress whose lovely holdings lie

       too forkt for truth; called also Kierkegaard.

[ 77 ]

Fall and rise of her midriff bells. I watch.

Blue knee-long shorts, striped light shirt. Bright between

Copt hills of the cushion a lazy green

Her sun-incomparable face I watch.

A darkness dreams adown her softest crotch,

A hand dreams on her breast, two fingers lean,

The ring shows like a wound. Her hair swirls clean

Alone in the vague room’s morning-after botch.

Endymion’s Glaucus through a thousand years

Collected the bodies of lovers lost, until

His own beloved’s body rustled and sighed . .

So I would, O to spring—blotting her fears,

The others in this house, the house, road, hill—

As once she up the stair sprang to me, lips wide!

[ 78 ]

On the wheat-sacks, sullen with the ceaseless damp,

William and I sat hours and talked of you,

I talked of you. Potting porter. Just a few

Fireflies were out, no stars, no moon; no lamp.

The Great Dane licked my forearm like a stamp,

Surprisingly, in total darkness. Who

Responds with peaceful gestures, calm and new

This while, your home-strong love’s ferocious 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,