Berryman - Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. Contents Note The present volume is being issued at the request of my publisher in order to make available in an inexpensive edition the text of Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and some of my short poems. This volume contains, besides the title poem (1953 in Partisan Review; 1956 in book form), a selection from The Dispossessed (1948), which drew on two earlier collections, some poems from His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt (1958) and one poem from Sonnets (1967).

None of the Dream Songs is included. J. B. [Born 1612 Anne Dudley, married at 16 Simon Bradstreet, a Cambridge man, steward to the Countess of Warwick and protg of her father Thomas Dudley secretary to the Earl of Lincoln. Crossed in the Arbella, 1630, under Governor Winthrop.] Homage to Mistress Bradstreet The Governor your husband lived so long moved you not, restless, waiting for him? Still, you were a patient woman I seem to see you pause here still: Sylvester, Quarles, in moments odd you pored before a fire at, bright eyes on the Lord, all the children still. Simon ..

Simon will listen while you read a Song. Outside the New World winters in grand dark white air lashing high thro the virgin stands foxes down foxholes sigh, surely the English heart quails, stunned. I doubt if Simon than this blast, that sea, spares from his rigour for your poetry more. We are on each others hands who care. Both of our worlds unhanded us. Lie stark, thy eyes look to me mild.

Out of maize & air your bodys made, and moves. I summon, see, from the centuries it. I think you wont stay. How do we linger, diminished, in our lovers air, implausibly visible, to whom, a year, years, over interims; or not; to a long stranger; or not; shimmer and disappear. Jaw-ript, rot with its wisdom, rending then; then not. When the mouth dies, who misses you? Your master never died, Simon ah thirty years past you Pockmarkt & westward staring on a haggard deck it seems I find you, young.

I come to check, I come to stay with you, and the Governor, & Father, & Simon, & the huddled men. By the week we landed we were, most, used up. Strange ships across us, after a fortnights winds unfavouring, frightened us; bone-sad cold, sleet, scurvy; so were ill many as one day we could have no sermons; broils, quelled; a fatherless child unkennelled; vermin crowding & waiting: waiting. And the day itself he leapt ashore young Henry Winthrop (delivered from the waves; because he found off their wigwams, sharp-eyed, a lone canoe across a tidal river, that water glittered fair & blue & narrow, none of the other men could swim and the plantations prime theft up to him, shouldered on a glad day hard on the glorious feasting of thanksgiving) drowned. How long with nothing in the ruinous heat, clams & acorns stomaching, distinction perishing, at which my heart rose, with brackish water, we would sing. When whispers knew the Governors last bread was browning in his oven, we were discouragd.

The Lady Arbella dying dyings at which my heart rose, but I did submit. That beyond the Atlantic wound our woes enlarge is hard, hard that starvation burnishes our fear, but I do gloss for You. Strangers & pilgrims fare we here, declaring we seek a City. Shall we be deceived? I know whom I have trusted, & whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that I have committed to his charge. Winter than summer worse, that first, like a file on a quick, or the poison suck of a thrilled tooth; and still we may unpack. Wolves & storms among, uncouth board-pieces, boxes, barrels vanish, grow houses, rise.

Motes that hop in sunlight slow indoors, and I am Ruth away: open my mouth, my eyes wet: I wuld smile: vellum I palm, and dream. Their forest dies to greensward, privets, elms & towers, whence a nightingale is throbbing. Women sleep sound. I was happy once .. (Something keeps on not happening; I shrink?) These minutes all their passions & powers sink and I am not one chance for an unknown cry or a flicker of unknown eyes. Chapped souls ours, by the day Springs strong winds swelled, Jacks pulpits arched, more glad.

The shawl I pinned flaps like a shooting soul might in such weather Heaven send. Succumbing half, in spirit, to a salmon sash I prod the nerveless novel succotash I must be disciplined, in arms, against that one, and our dissidents, and myself. Versing, I shroud among the dynasties; quaternion on quaternion, tireless I phrase anything past, dead, far, sacred, for a barbarous place. To please your wintry father? all this bald abstract didactic rime I read appalled harassed for your fame mistress neither of fiery nor velvet verse, on your knees hopeful & shamefast, chaste, laborious, odd, whom the sea tore.The damned roar with loss, so they hug & are mean with themselves, and I cannot be thus. Why then do I repine, sick, bad, to long after what must not be? I lie wrong once more. For at fourteen I found my heart more carnal and sitting loose from God, vanity & the follies of youth took hold of me; then the pox blasted, when the Lord returned.

That year for my sorry face so-much-older Simon burned, so Father smiled, with love. Their will be done. He to me ill lingeringly, learning to shun a bliss, a lightning blood vouchsafed, what did seem life. I kissed his Mystery. Drydust in Gods eye the aquavivid skin of Simon snoring lit with fountaining dawn when my eyes unlid, sad. John Cotton shines on Bostons sin I m drawn, in pieties that seem the weary drizzle of an unremembered dream.

Women have gone mad at twenty-one. Ambition mines, atrocious, in. Food endless, people few, all to be done. As pippins roast, the question of the wolves turns & turns. Fangs of a wolf will keep, the neck round of a child, that child brave. I remember who in meeting smiled & was punisht, and I know who whispered & was stockt.

We lead a thoughtful life. But Bostons cage we shun. The winters close, Springs open, no child stirs under my withering heart, O seasoned heart God grudged his aid. All things else soil like a shirt. Simon is much away. My executive stales.

The town came through for the cartway by the pales, but my patience is short, I revolt from, I am like, these savage foresters whose passionless dicker in the shade, whose glance impassive & scant, belie their murderous cries when quarry seems to show. Again I must have been wrong, twice. Unwell in a new way. Can that begin? God brandishes. O love, O I love. Kin, gather.

My world is strange and merciful, ingrown months, blessing a swelling trance. So squeezed, wince you I scream? I love you & hate off with you. Ages! Useless. Below my waist he has me in Hells vise. Stalling. He let go.

Come back: brace me somewhere. No. No. Yes! everything down hardens I press with horrible joy down my back cracks like a wrist shame I am voiding oh behind it is too late hide me forever I work thrust I must free now I all muscles & bones concentrate what is living from dying? Simon I must leave you so untidy Monster you are killing me Be sure Ill have you later Women do endure I can can no longer and it passes the wretched trap whelming and I am me drencht & powerful, I did it with my body! One proud tug greens Heaven. Marvellous, unforbidding Majesty. I fly. I fly.