Berryman’s Sonnets (5 page)

Of elected love and love’s delicious rite

Upon the livid stranger Loves forego.’

. . I am this strange thing I despised; you are.

To become ourselves we are these wayward things.

And the lies at noon, months’ tremblings, who foresaw?

And I did not foresee fraud of the Law

The scarecrow restraining like a man, its rings

Blank . . my love’s eyes familiar as a scar!

[ 46 ]

Are we?
You murmur ‘not’. What of the night

Attack on the dark road we could not contain,

Twice I slid to you sudden as the stain

Joy bloods the wanderer at the water’s sight,

And back, but you writhed on me . . as I write

I tremble . . trust me not to keep on sane

Until you whisper ‘Come to me again’

Unless you whisper soon. O come we soon

Together dark and sack each other outright,

Doomed cities loose and thirsty as a dune . .

Lovers we are, whom now the on-tide licks.

Our fast of famed sleep stirs, darling, diurnal,—

Hurry! till we, beginning our eternal

Junket on the winds, wake like a ton of Styx.

[ 47 ]

How far upon these songs with my strict wrist

Hard to bear down, who knows? None is to read

But you: so gently . . but then truth’s to heed,

The sole word, near or far, shot in the mist.

Double I sing, I must, your utraquist,

Crumpling a syntax at a sudden need,

Stridor of English softening to plead

O to you plainly lest you more resist.

‘Arthur lay then at Caerlon upon Usk . .’

I see, and all that story swims back . . red

Satin over rushes . . Mother’s voice at dusk.

So I comb times and men to cram you rare:

‘Faire looketh
Ceres
with her yellow Haire’—

Fairer you far O here lie filteréd.

[ 48 ]

I’ve met your friend at last, your violent friend,

Laughter out of a hard life; and she out,

Treating in talk one door really as shut

That should be shut, gashes will hardly mend.

‘Here is Katrina’ at the other end

Of telephones . . ‘Heck, I feel wonderful! . .’

And so do I when I am with her, but

I would she knew she lashed me where I bend.

And so do I when I am with her, only

Her ‘they’ and ‘harmony’ harry me lone and wild.

. . How she loves you! and then to disarrange,

Powerful chemist, all the years she’s filed

With stubborn work, for the law! . . she means to change.

So do I mean,—less (when I rise up) lonely.

[ 49 ]

One note, a daisy, and a photograph,

To slake this siege of weeks without you, all.

Your dawn-eyed envoy, welcome as Seconal,

To call you faithful . . now this cenotaph,

A shabby mummy flower. Note I keep safe,

Nothing, on a ration slip a social scrawl—

Not that it didn’t forth some pages call

Of my analysis, one grim paragraph.

The snapshot then—your eyes down, your hair bound:

Your power leashed, but too your blaze is dim . .

By the sea, thinking, long before we met;

Akimbo from your nape, what petrels round

(Out of the print) your unsuspicious slim

Dear figure, warning ‘Dream of him

       now you not know whom you will not forget.’

[ 50 ]

They come too thick, hail-hard, and all beside

Batter, necessities of my nights and days,

My proper labour that my storm betrays

Weekly lamented, weakly flung aside;

What in the musical wind to work but glide

Among the wind, willing my eyes should daze

Fast on her image, for an exhaustless phrase,

While themes throng, the rapt world one & hers & wide.

They crowd on, crowning what I perforce complain

Remorseful in my journal of, and lest

Thick they fall thin, I beg the calm belongs,—

Traditional meditation. But when my rein

Fails most, still I race feeble to protest

These two months . . decades of excited songs.

[ 51 ]

A tongue there is wags, down in the dark wood O:

Trust it not. It trills malice among friends,

Irrelevant squibs and lies, to its own ends

Or to no ends, simply because it would O.

To us, us most I hear, it prinks no good O;

Has its idea, Jamesian; apprehends

Truth non-aviarian; meddles, and ‘defends’

Honour free . . that such a bill so wily should O!

Who to my hand all year flew to be fed

Makes up his doubts to dart at us . . Ah well,

Did you see the
green
of that catalpa tree?—

A certain jackal will lose half its head

For cheek, our keek, our hairy philomel.—

How can you tell?—A little bird told me.

[ 52 ]

A sullen brook hardly would satisfy

The Winter-traveller slumps near, Stony Brook;

Prattle of brooks it scorns, only in some crook

Fetches again and now a muddy sigh

Reaches me here.—A liner rocks the sky,

I shudder beneath the trees. I brought a book,

Shut on my brown knee. Once I rise and look

Under the bridge-arch. The third day of July.

Close, going back, I pass (still as a mouse)

The fatuous stranger in the stone strong home

Now you and my friend your husband are away.

And I must gnaw there somewhy. Double day:

In the end I race by cocky as a comb,

Adust . .
Da ist meiner Liebstens Haus.

[ 53 ]

Some sketch sweat’ out, unwilling swift & crude,

A hundred more like bats in swelter-day

A-lunge about my office, I’m away

Downstairs for coffee, and to rest, and brood.

. . The
mots
fly, and the flies mope on the food

Where all-age adolescents swig and bray,

An ice-cream-soda jag, the booths are gay . .

The ass-eyes after me unlid, protrude.

And I have fled antcrazy to my task

In the hotbox at the top of Upper Wyne

To work their children music! as ice cubes

Pleasing, colder keeping, more than they ask,

As worthy of them—not of you . . No sign . .

Ermite-amateur
in the midst of the boobs.

[ 54 ]

It was the sky all day I grew to and saw.

I cycled southeast through the empty towns,

Flags hanging out, between the summer grains,

Meeting mainly the azure minions of our law.

Near our fake lake an artificial pool

Was full of men and women; all the rest,

Shore for the Fourth. I crookt two roses. Most

I studied the sky’s involuntary rule.

I followed a cloud and finally I caught it,

Springing my ribbon down the world of green . .

Shadow to shadow, under tropical day . .

Flat country, slow, alone. So in my pocket

Your snapshot nightmares where (cloth, flesh between)

My heart was, before I gave it away.

[ 55 ]

When I recall I could believe you’d go

I start. I can’t believe you will come back.

Months on to Monday, and then Monday’s rack

Uncertain up the sky unseen winds blow

Bringing what weather I cannot foreknow.

Still I see better in my almanac

Your coming, than in the columns white & black

My going later. All our plans outgrow

My local eyes, locked where somehow we draw

Somewhat together, wince to a single goad,

Each other steady . . steadily closer . . keep.

Closer: against the departures of our law

Let’s Dido-like ‘forge causes of abode’ . .

Whom the sliding stars wheedle as one to sleep.

[ 56 ]

Sunderings and luxations,
luxe,
and grief-

unending exile from the original spouse,

Dog-fights! one bites intimate as a louse

The lousy other, Love the twitching leaf

Wide to the weather, hangover-long, jag-brief,

Nulliparous intensities, or as mouse

To cats the child to broken parents, house

Sold, books divided . . divorce as a relief . .

We discussed, drinking, one sad afternoon

In a Connecticut house in cloudy June,

Thinking, whoever was mentioned, still of others.

I thought of you,—come we too to this vile

Loose fagend? earlier
still
loves so defile? . .

Could
our
incredible marriage . . like all others’ . . ?

[ 57 ]

Our love conducted as in heavy rain

Develops hair and lowers its head: the lash

And weight of rain breed, like the soundless slosh

Divers make round a wrack, régime, domain

Invisible, to us inured invisible stain

Of all our process; also lightning flash

Limns us audacious and furtive, whom slow crash

On crash jolt like the mud- and storm-blind Wain.

If the rain ceased and the unlikely sun

Shone out! . . whom our stars shake, could we emerge

Trustful and clear into the common rank,—

So long deceiving?—Days when Dathan sank

Quick to the pit not past, darling, we verge

Daily O there: have strange changes begun?

[ 58 ]

Sensible, coarse, and moral; in decent brown;

Its money doling to an orphanage;

Sober . . well-spirited but sober; sage

Plain nourishing life nor you nor I could down

I doubt, our blinkers lost, blood like a clown

Dancing upon a one-night hot-foot stage,

Brains in a high wind, high brains, the next page

Trembling,—the water’s fine, come in and drown.

Since the corruption of the working classes

I am speaking of the Eighteenth Century: kisses

Opening on betrothals, love like a vise.

Where shawm and flute flutter the twilight, where

Conjugal, toothless, has a booth at the Fair,

The Reno brothels boom, suddenly we writhe.

[ 59 ]

Loves are the summer’s. Summer like a bee

Sucks our best off, thigh-brushes, and is gone.

The yellow pollen upon the white winds blown

Settles. I feel the summer draining me,

I lean back breathless in an agony

Of charming loss I suffer without moan,

Without my love, or with my love alone.

She left me in the Spring, or I say wé

Left before there we bloomed our secret garden!

The ghosts of breezes widowy small paths wander,

A fruitless bird pipes its surprising sorrow.

When will she, she come back? . . against whom I harden

My effortless ghost in vain, who moved asunder

Flowers at the come of summer beautiful and narrow.

[ 60 ]

Today is it? Is it today? I shudder

For nothing in my chair, and suddenly yawn.

Today I suddenly believe. Since dawn

When I got up, my muscles like a rudder

Strain crosswise from this work. I rise and mutter

Something, and hum, pace, and sit down again

Hard. A butterfly in my shoulder then

Stops and aches. My stomach swings like a shutter.

As the undergrounds piston a force of air

Before their crash into the station, you

Are felt before your coming, and the platforms shake.

So light, so small, so far still, to impair

Action and peace so . . risks we take make true

Maybe our safeties . .
come
for our risk’s sake.

[ 61 ]

Languid the songs I wish I willed . . I try . .

Smooth songs untroubled like a silver spoon

To pour your creamy beauty back, warm croon

Blind, soft . . but I have something in my eye,

I see by fits, see what there, rapid and sly,

Difficult, so that it will be off soon,

I’d better
fix
it! frantic as a loon,

Smarting, world-churned, some convulsed song I cry.

Well . . (also I plead, I have something in mind,

My bobsled need, the need for me you’ll find

If you look deeper: study our winter-scene) . .

Thinking is well, but worse still to be caught

The wholly beautiful just beyond thought,—

Small trees in mist far down an endless green!

[ 62 ]

Tyranny of your car—so much resembles

Beachwagons all, all with officious hope

Conscript my silly eyes—offers a trope

For your grand sway upon these months my shambles:

Your cleaver now to other women’s brambles

I’ll not contrast—no, all of you have scope,

Teeth breasts tongues thighs eyes hair: as rope to rope

You point to point compare, and the subject trembles.

What makes yóu then this ominous wide blade

I’d run from O unless I bleat to die?

Nothing: you are not: woman blonde, called Lise.

It is I lope to be your sheep, to wade

Thick in my cordial blood, to howl and sigh

As I decide . . if I could credit this.

[ 63 ]

Here too you came and sat a time once, drinking.

I could have cut their throats to be alone.

Yet all the hour I slumped here like a stone

My heart smiled, I smiled while my heart was sinking.

Happier than I seemed for their hoodwinking,

My smile was under . . over . . so was the moan

Arcane I kept out of the ‘master’ tone

Native to me I adopted . . my rabid thinking.

Juggler and cull! and places, words, call up

Inscrutable disturbance bound to you

Partout! partout
some crowning or some crime;

As Julian spending a nickel, Wid a dime,

Mazes of instant silence must pursue,—

Obsession’s hypocrites, time’s, their own dupe.

[ 64 ]

The dew is drying fast, a last drop glistens

White on a damaged leaf not far from me.