The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (61 page)

One clear glass slipper; a slender blue single-rose vase;

one chipped glass Scottie; an eggshell teacup & saucer, tiny,

fragile, but with sturdy handle; a gazelle? the lightest pink flowers

on the teacup, a gold circle, a line really on the saucer; gold

line curving down the handle; glass doors on the cabinet which sat

on the floor & was not too much taller than I; lace doilies? on

the shelves; me serious on the floor, no brother, shiny floor or

shining floor between the flat maroon rug & the glass doors of

the cabinet:

I never told anyone what I knew. Which was that it wasn’t

for anyone else what it was for me.

The piano was black. My eyes were brown. I had rosy

cheeks, every sonofabitch in the world said. I never saw them.

My father came cutting around the corner of the A&P

& diagonally across the lot in a beeline toward our front sidewalk

& the front porch (& the downstairs door); and I could see him, his

long legs, quick steps, nervous, purposeful, coming & passing, combing

his hair, one two three quick wrist flicks that meant “worrying” &

“quickly!”

There were lilacs in the back yard, & dandelions in the lot.

There was a fence.

Pat Dugan used to swing through that lot, on Saturdays, not too tall,

in his brown suit or blue one, white shirt, no tie, soft brown men’s

slippers on his feet, & Grampa! I’d yell & run to meet him &

“Hi! Grampa,” I’d say & he’d swing my arm and be singing his funny

song:

“She told me that she loved me, but

that was yesterday. She told me

that she loved me, & then

she went away!”

I didn’t know it must have been a sad song, for somebody!

He was so jaunty, light in his eyes and laugh lines around

them, it was his happy song, happy with me, it was 1942 or 4,

and he was 53.

TO STEVE CAREY

& so I took the whole trip

filled with breaths, heady with assurance

gained in all innocence from that self’s

possession of a sure stride, a strong heart,

quick hands, & what one sport would surely describe

as that easy serenity born of seemingly having been

“a quick read.” “He could read the field from before

he even knew what that was.” He was so right. Long before.

It was so true. I postulated the whole thing.

It was the innocence of Second Avenue, of one

who only knew about First. I didn’t win it;

I didn’t buy it; I didn’t bird-dog it; but I didn’t dog it.

I could always hear it, not see it. But I rarely had

to listen hard to it. I sure didn’t have to “bear” it.

I didn’t think, “Later for that.” I knew something,

but I didn’t know that. But I didn’t know,

brilliant mornings, blind in the rain’s rich light,

now able always to find water, that now I would drink.

When having something to do

but not yet being at it

because I’m alone, because of you

I lay down the book, & pick up the house

& move it around until it is

where it is what it is I am doing

that is the something I had to do

because I’m no longer alone, because of you.

The goddess stands in front of her cave.

The beetle wakes up. The frightened camper watches

The two horsemen. The walking catfish walks by.

The twins are fighting the wind let loose in the dark

To be born again the human animal young in the day’s events.

The laundry-basket lid is still there.

The moving houses are very moving.

The last empress of China

Is receiving the new members of the orchestra

Through two layers of glass in The Empress Hotel.

In the wreck of the cut-rate shoe store the poet can be seen,

Drunk; a monster; the concussed consciousness in

The charge of the beautiful days. The difficulties are great.

The colors must be incredible: it all coheres:

The force of being she releases in him being

The claim of the dimensions of the world.

You in love with her

read my poems and wonder

what she sees in you.

Before I began life this time

I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence

Once here I signed in, see name below, and added

Some words remembered from an earlier time,

“The intention of the organism is to survive.”

My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WWII,

They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose

In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine

Was a story without a plot. The days of my years

Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which

I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave

Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place

In Society. 101 St. Mark’s Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009

New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out,

Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone

I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained

Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent

Reification of my own experiences delivered to me

Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all.

I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him.

The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work,

Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source

Of my great, terrible, & inarticulate one grief. In my time

I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed

Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end

Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I

Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly

From a tired brain, it, like them, suitable, & fitting.

Let none regret my end who called me friend.

FOR TOM CLARK

Anselm is sleeping; Edmund is feverish, &

Chatting; Alice doing the Times Crossword Puzzle:

I, having bathed, am pinned, nude, to the bed

Between Green Hills of Africa &

The Pro Football Mystique. Steam is hissing

In the pipes, cold air blowing across my legs. . . .

Tobacco smoke is rising up my nose, as Significance

Crackles & leaps about inside my nightly no-mind.

Already it’s past two, of a night like any other:

O, Old Glory, atop the Empire State, a building, &

Between the Hudson & the East rivers, O, purple, & O, murky black,

If only . . . but O, finally, you, O, Leonardo, you at last arose

Bent, and racked with fit after fit of coughing, & Cursing!

Terrible curses! No Joke! What will happen? Who

be served? Whose call go unanswered? And

Who can 44 down, “Pretender to

The Crown of Georgia?” be . . .

(Boris Pasternak?)

FOR DICK GALLUP

Peeling rubber all the way up

SECOND AVENUE
into Harlem Heights

Our yellow Triumph took us out of Manhattan tenement hells

Into the deer-ridden black earth dairylands.

Corn-fed murderers,
COPS
, waved us past

Low-slung Frank Lloyd Wright basements. We missed most deer.

You left me in Detroit, for money. In Freeport, Maine, our host

Shotgunned his wife into cold death, who was warm. Fuck him. Scoot

Ferried us to Portland, then leaped out of his life from atop the

UN
Building.

Enplaning next to the flatlands, we rubber-stamped our own passports

And in one year changed the face of American Poetry. Hepatitis

felled you

Then on the very steps where the Peace Corps first reared its no-head.

Though it helped pass the long weekends, polygamy unsettled me

considerably

In Ann Arbor, where each day’s mail meant one more lover dead.

My favorite

Elm tree died there as well. But Europe beckoned, and we went, first

Pausing to don the habits of Buffalo, in Buffalo. After that it was

weak pins

& strong needles, but travel truly does broaden. It broadened us,

And we grew fat & famous, or at least I did. You fell

For a Lady from Baltimore near the Arno. Then you fell

Into the Arno. You drowned & kept on drowning; while I, in my

Silver threads, toured the Historical Tate, & mutilated

A well-thought of Blake while England slept.

In Liverpool a Liverpudlian dropped his bottle of milk beneath a

neon light,

Smashing it to smithereens. The sidewalk white with milk made us cry.

And so we left. Back in the
USA
, on crutches, we acquired ourselves

a wife

For 12 goats and a matched pair of Arabian thoroughbreds picked up

on a whim

From a rug-peddler in Turkestan. God knows what we gave to him.

Now I’m living in New York City once again, gone grey, and mostly

stay in bed

While you are pacing your floor in Baltimore. But we aren’t “back”

yet, not

By a long shot. Oh No! This trip doesn’t end

Until we drop off our yellow Triumph somewhere still far away

From where we are now. No, this ain’t it yet.

There’s black coffee & glazed donuts still due us, bubba,

At a place called The Jesse James Cafe. So, hit it. Let’s burn rubber.

TIMES CRITIC DESPISES CURRENT PLAY
, a Post reports.

Dangling from it, in the wind, his body gently sways.

Come on, floor this Mother! Whoops! Don’t hit that lonely old

grubber.

FOR ALICE

Back to dawn by police word

to sprinkle it

Over the lotions that change

On locks

To sprinkle I say

In funny times

The large pig at which the intense cones beat

So the old fat flies toward the brain

Under the sun and the rain

So we are face to face

again

Nothing in these drawers

Which is terror to the idiot

& the non-idiot alike. No?

Nine stories high Second Avenue

On the roof there’s a party

All the friends are there watching

By the light of the moon the blazing sun

Go down over the side of the planet

To light up the underside of Earth

There are long bent telescopes for the friends

To watch this through. The friends are all in shadow.

I can see them from my bed inside my head.

44 years I’ve loved these dreams today.

17 years since I wrote for the first time a poem

On my birthday, why did I wait so long?

my land a good land

its highways go to many good places where

many good people were found: a home land, whose song comes up

from the throat of a hummingbird & it ends

where the sun goes to across the skies of blue.

I live there with you.

I appear in the kitchen

duffle-bag in left hand.

“Anybody here?” I say. You

hearing me from the front room,

“Hi. How was it?” “Any pepsi?”

I say hopefully. “No.” “Well,

Central Washington was Out of the

Question!, but you are now looking

at The Complete Toast of Guam!” “You

were gone
Forever
!”

Will the little girl                   outside

reading this

writing

being written

by a man

inside

Now

moving easily