John Berryman - Delusions, Etc.

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Lart est rligieux. And indeed if Eugne Irtnev was mentally deranged everyone is in the same case; the most mentally de ranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves. Feu! feu! feu! Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages I OPUS DEI (a laymans winter mockup, wherein moreover the Offices are not within one day said but thro their hours at intervals over many weekssuch being the World) Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord. Lauds L ET us rejoice on our cots, for His nocturnal miracles antique outside the Local Group & within it & within our hearts in it, and for quotidian miracles parsecs-off yielding to the Hale reflector. Oh He is potent in the corners.

Men with Him are potent: quasars we intuit, and sequent to sufficient discipline we perceive this glow keeping His winter out. My marvellous black new brim-rolled felt is both stuffy & raffish. I hit my summit with it, in firelight. Maybe I only got a Yuletide tie (increasing sixty) & some writing-paper but ha (ha ha ) Ive bought myself a hat! Plus-strokes from position zero! Its feathers sprout. Thank you, Your Benevolence! permissive, smiling on our silliness You forged. Matins T HOU hard.

I will be blunt: Like widening blossoms again glad toward Your soothe of sun & solar drawing forth, I find meself little this bitter morning, Lord, tonight. Less were you tranquil to me in my dark just now than tyrannous. O some bore down sore with enticementsOne abandoned me half I swelled up towardtill I crash awake. However, lo, across what wilderness in vincible ignorance past forty years lost to (as now I see) Your sorrowing I strayed abhorrent, blazing with my Self. I thought I was in private with the Devil hounding me upon Daddys cowardice (trustless in stir the freeze: Do your own time). Intertangled allchoking, groping bodies.

Behold, thou art taken in thy mischief, because thou art a bloody man with horror loud down from Heaven did I not then hear, but sudden was received,appointed even poor scotographer, far here from Court, humming over goodnatured Handels Te Deum. I waxed, upon surrender, strenuous ah almost able service to devise. I am like your sun, Dear, in a state of shear parts of my surface are continually slipping past others, not You, not You. O I may, even, wave in crisis like a skew Wolf-Rayet star. Seas and hills, the high lakes, Superior, accomplish your blue or emerald donations manifest too your soft forbearance, hard & flint for fierce man hardly to take in. Yes. Just now. Just now.

I read that. Hop foot to foot, hurl the white pillows about, jubilant brothers: He is our overlord, holding up yet with crimson flags the Sun whom Hell embark soon mounting fluent day! Prime O CCLUDES wild dawn. Up thro green ragged clouds one sun is tearing, beset alders sway weary under swollen sudden drops and February winds shudder our doors, Lord, as thou knowest. What fits me today which work I can? Ive to poor minimum pared my commitments; still Im sure to err grievous & frequent before Evensong and both I long toward & abhor that coming. Yet if You and I make a majority (as old Claudel encouraged) what sharp law can pass this morning?upon which, I take heart. Also: The specific gravity of iron is one and one-half times the size of Switzerland.

Zany enlivens. People, pipe with pipes: the least of us is back on contract, even unto myself succeeding in sunrise all over again! All customary blessings, anathemas of the date (post-Lupercal, and sure The Baby was my valentine), Im not Your beaver, here disabled, still it is an honour, where some have achieved, to limp behind along, humming, & keen again upon what blue trumps, hazy, vainless glory. In Alexandria, O Saint Julian gouty, chair-borne, displayed then on a camel thorough the insufferable city, and burned. In other places, many other holy bishops, confessors, and martyrs. Thanks be to God. Interstitial Office B ITTER upon conviction (even of the seven women jurors several wept) I will not kneel just now, Father.

I know I must but being black & galled for these young men, sick with their savage Judge (we felt we had no alternative, since all their evidence was ordered stricken) deep fatigue. Conducting his own defence: men do pass laws that usurp Gods power I hope youll try in your own way to speak peace. God guide you. Grim the prosecutor: Hes trying to weasel his way out of it. Draft records here would have gone up in fire. Peasant ladies & poupies there went up go up in fire.

Who sat thro all three trials tells me the juror in blue looked inconsolably sad, and hid her eyes, when one propped up on his table a little hand-lettered sign WE LOVE YOU . The judge is called P N. This is of record. Where slept then Your lightning? Loafed Your torque. Well. Help us all! YesyesI kneel.

Tierce O H half as fearful for the yawning day where full the Enemys paratus and I clearly may wholly from prime time fail, as yet from yesterday with good heart grateful having gone no more (under what gentle tempting You knew I bore) than what occurred astray, I almost at a loss now genuflect and pray: Twice, thrice each day five weeks at as we forgive those who trespass against us I have thought ah his envenomed & most insolent missive and I have done it!and I damn him still odd times & unawares catch myself at it: Im not a good man, I wont ever be, theres no health in here. You expect too much. This pseudo-monk is all but at despair. My blustering & whining & ill will versus His willForgive my insolence, since when I was a fervent child to You and Father Boniface each 5 a.m. But this world that was not. Lavender & oval, lilac, dissolve into ones saying hurriedly In sex my husband is brutal, beating, dirty, and drunk.

Has this become Thy will, Thou Reconciler? Sext H IGH noon has me pitchblack, so in hope out, slipping thro stasis, my heart skeps a beat actuellement, reflecting on the subtler menace of decline. Who mentioned in his middle age Great Death wars in us living which will have us all caused choreographers to tinker maps pointing a new domestic capital and put before Self-Preservation l). We do not know, deep now the dire age on, if its so, or mere a nightmare of one dark one, Manis by no means ultimate disciple. I wish You would clear this up. Moreover, I know it may extend millennia, or ever, till you tell somebody to. Meantime: Okay.

Now hear this programme for my remnant of today. Corpuscle-Donor, to the dizzy tune of half a hundred thousand while I blink losing that horrid same scarlet amount and reel intact ahead: so of rare Heart repair my fracturing heart obedient to disobedience minutely, wholesale, that come midnight neither my mortal sin nor thought upon it lose me. Nones P ROBLEM . I cannot come among Your saints, its not in meVelle eh?I will, and fail. But I would rather not be lost from You if I could hear of a middle ground, Id opt: a decent if minute salvation, sort of, on some fringe. I am afraid, afraid.