Berryman’s Sonnets (3 page)

[ 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 down 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

And poor Mr Eliot and the Admiral

Have come, and a damned word nobody can hear.

Two centuries here have been abused our youth:

(Your grey eyes pierce the miles to meet my eyes)

The bicentennial of an affair with truth

(In the southern noon whom do you tyrannize?)

Not turned out well: the cast girl sucks her tooth.

(Secret, let us be true time crucifies.)

[ 21 ]

Whom undone David into the dire van sent

I’d see as far. I can’t dislike that man,

Grievously and intensely like him even,

Envy nor jealousy admit, consent

Neither to the night of rustlers I frequent

Nor to this illness dreams them; but I can,

Only, that which we must: bright as a pan

Our love gleams, empty almost empty—lent.

. . Did he, or not, see? I stood close to you

But our lips had broken and you could reply . .

And
is
he clement? does he give us rope?

It is the owner drives one crazy, who

Came, or luck brought him, first; a police spy;

A kind and good man; with a gun; hunts hope.

[ 22 ]

If not white shorts—then in a princess gown

Where gaslights pierce the mist I’d have your age,

Young in a grey gown, blonde and royal, rage

Of handlebars at Reisenweber’s, frown

Or smile to quell or rally half the town,

To polka partners mad, to flout the stage,

To pale The Lily to an average

Woman, looking up from your champagne, or down.

Myself, ascotted, still dumb as a mome

Drinking your eyes . . No Bill comes by to cadge

A Scotch in Rector’s, waving his loose tongue.

I tip my skimmer to your friend who clung

Too long, blue-stocking cracked on the
Red Badge

Stevie’s becoming known for . . We drive home.

[ 23 ]

They may suppose, because I would not cloy your ear—

If ever these songs by other ears are heard—

With ‘love’ and ‘love’, I loved you not, but blurred

Lust with strange images, warm, not quite sincere,

To switch a bedroom black. O mutineer

With me against these empty captains! gird

Your scorn again above all at
this
word

Pompous and vague on the stump of his career.

Also I fox ‘heart’, striking a modern breast

Hollow as a drum, and ‘beauty’ I taboo;

I want a verse fresh as a bubble breaks,

As little false … Blood of my sweet unrest

Runs all the same—I am in love with you—

Trapped in my rib-cage something throes and aches!

[ 24 ]

Still it pleads and rankles: ‘Why do you love
me?
’

Replies then jammed me dumb; but now I speak,

Singing why each should
not
the other seek—

The octet will be weaker—in the fishful sea.

Your friends I don’t like all, and poetry

You less than music stir to, the blue streak

Troubles me you drink: if all these are weak

Objections, they are all, and all I foresee.

Your choice, though! . . Who no Goliath has slung low.

When one day rushing about your lawn you saw

Him whom I might not name without some awe

If curious Johnson should enquire below,

‘Who lifts this voice harsh, fresh, and beautiful?’

—‘As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.’

[ 25 ]

Sometimes the night echoes to prideless wailing

Low as I hunch home late and fever-tired,

Near you not, nearing the sharer I desired,

Toward whom till now I sailed back; but that sailing

Yaws, from the cabin orders like a failing

Dribble, the stores disordered and then fired

Skid wild, the men are glaring, the mate has wired

Hopeless:
locked in, and humming, the Captain’s nailing

A false log to the lurching table. Lies

And passion sing in the cabin on the voyage home,

The burgee should fly Jolly Roger: wind

Madness like the tackle of a crane (outcries

Ascend) around to heave him from the foam

Irresponsible, since all the stars rain blind.

[ 26 ]

Crouched on a low ridge sloping to where you pour

No doubt a new drink late this easy night,

The tooth-drawn town dreams . . censorless, can bite

Rebellion, bodies mauled . . but breaks a snore.

Hessians maraud no more, coaches no more

Crash off north, south; only a smooth car’s flight