John Berryman - 77 Dream Songs: Poems

ALSO BY JOHN BERRYMAN POETRY Poems (1942) The Dispossessed (1948) Homage to Mistress Bradstreet (1956) His Thought Made Pockets & The Plane Buckt (1958) Berrymans Sonnets (1967) Short Poems (1967) Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and Other Poems (1968) His Toy, His Dream, His Rest (1968) The Dream Songs (1969) Love & Fame (1970) Delusions, Etc. (1972) Henrys Fate & Other Poems, 19671972 (1977) Collected Poems 19371971 (1989) The Heart Is Strange (2014) PROSE Stephen Crane: A Critical Biography (1950) The Arts of Reading (with Ralph Ross and Allen Tate) (1960) Recovery (1973) The Freedom of the Poet (1976) Berrymans Shakespeare (1999) AUTHORS NOTE These are sections, constituting one version, of a poem in progress. Its working title, since 1955, has been The Dream Songs . One is dedicated () to the memory of Daddy Rice who sang and jumped Jim Crow in Louisville in 1828 (London, 1836 and later), and others to friends: Robert Giroux (), John Crowe Ransom (), Howard Munford (), Ralph Ross (), Robert Fitzgerald (), Daniel Hughes (), William Meredith (), the Theodore Morrisons and the Chisholm Gentrys (), Dr A. Boyd Thomes (), Edmund and Elena Wilson (), George Amberg (), Mark Van Doren (), Allen and Isabella Tate (), Saul Bellow (). The editors directing certain journals have been hospitable to some of the Songs here brought together: The Times Literary Supplement , The Noble Savage , The Observer , Poetry , Partisan Review , Encounter , Poetry Northwest , The New York Review of Books , The New Republic , Minnesota Review , Harpers , Ramparts , The Yale Review , The Kenyon Review .

Many opinions and errors in the Songs are to be referred not to the character Henry, still less to the author, but to the title of the work. J.B. Huffy Henry hid the day, unappeasable Henry sulked. I see his point,a trying to put things over. It was the thought that they thought they could do it made Henry wicked & away. But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henrys side. Then came a departure. Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought. I dont see how Henry, pried open for all the world to see, survived. What he has now to say is a long wonder the world can bear & be. Once in a sycamore I was glad all at the top, and I sang.

Hard on the land wears the strong sea and empty grows every bed. There were strange gatherings. A vote would come that would be no vote. There would come a rope. Yes. There would come a rope.

Men have their hats down. Dancing in the Dark will see him up, car-radio-wise. So many, some wont find a rut to park. It is in the administration of rhetoric, on these occasions, thatnot the fathomless heart the thinky death consists; his chest is pinched. The enemy are sick, and so is us of. Often, to rising trysts, like this one, drove he out and the gasps of love, after all, had got him ready.

However things hurt, men hurt worse. Hes stark to be jerked onward? Yes. In the headlights he got keep him steady, leak not, look out over. This hard work, boss, wait for The Word. His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.

Chen Lungs too came, came and crampt & then that dragoners mother was gone. It seem we dont have no good bed to lie on, forever. While he drawing his first breath, while skinning his knees, while he was so beastly with love for Charlotte Coquet he skated up & down in front of her house wishing he could, sir, die, while being bullied & he dreamt he could fly during irregular verbsthem world-sought bodies safe in the Arctic lay: Strindberg rocked in his niche, the great Andre by muscled Fraenkel under whats of the tent, torn like then limbs, by bears over fierce decades, harmless. Up in pairs go we not, but we have a good bed. I have said what I had to say. Sabbath There is an eye, there was a slit.

Nights walk, and confer on him fear. The strangler tree, the dancing mouse confound his vision; then they loosen it. Henry widens. How did Henry House himself ever come here? Nights run. Tes yeux bizarres me suivent when loth at landfall soft I leave. The soldiers, Coleridge Rilke Poe, shout commands I never heard.

They march about, dying & absurd. Toddlers are taking over. O ver! Sabbath belling. Snoods converge on a weary-daring man. What now can be cleared up? from the Yard the visitors urge. Watch. Watch.

God bless Henry. He lived like a rat, with a thatch of hair on his head in the beginning. Henry was not a coward. Much. He never deserted anything; instead he stuck, when things like pity were thinning. So may be Henry was a human being.

Lets investigate that. We did; okay. He is a human American man. Thats true. My lass is braking. My brass is aching.

Come & diminish me, & map my way. Gods Henrys enemy. Were in business Why, what business must be clear. A cornering. I couldnt feel more like it. Mr Bones, as I look on the saffron sky, you strikes me as ornery.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) Ever to confess youre bored means you have no Inner Resources. I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature, Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as achilles, who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away into mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind: me, wag.

Let us suppose, valleys & such ago, one pal unwinding from his labours in one bar of Chicago, and this did actual happen. This was so. And many graces are slipped, & many a sin even that laid man low but this will be remembered & told over, that she was heard at last, haughtful & greasy, to bawl in that low bar: You can biff me, you can bang me, get it youll never. I may be only a Polack broad but I dont lay easy. Kiss my ass, thats what you are. Women is better, braver.

In a foehn of loss entire, which too they hotter understand, having had it, we struggle. Some hang heavy on the sauce, some invest in the past, one hides in the land. Henry was not his favourite. Henrys pelt was put on sundry walls where it did much resemble Henry and them persons was delighted. Especially his long & glowing tail by all them was admired, and visitors. They whistled: This is it ! Golden, whilst your frozen daiquiris whir at midnight, gleams on you his fur & silky & black.

Mission accomplished, pal. My molten yellow & moonless bag, drained, hangs at rest. Collect in the cold depths barracuda. Ay, in Sealdah Station some possessionless children survive to die. The Chinese communes hum. Two daiquiris withdrew into a corner of the gorgeous room and one told the other a lie.

Muttered Henry:Lord of matter, thus: upon some more unquiet spirit knock, my madnesses have cease. All the quarter astonishes a lonely out & back. They set their clocks by Henry House, the steadiest man on the block. And Lucifer:I smell you for my own, by smug. What have I tossed you but the least (tho hard); fit for your ears. Your servant, bored with horror, sat alone with busy teeth while his dislike increased unto himself, in tears.

And he:O promising despair, in solitude End there. Your avenues are dying: leave me: I dove under the oaken arms of Brother Martin, St Simeon the Lesser Theologian, Bodhidharma, and the Baal Shem Tov. A Strut for Roethke Westward, hit a low note, for a roarer lost across the Sound but north from Bremerton, hit a way down note. And never cadenza again of flowers, or cost. Him who could really do that cleared his throat & staggered on. The bluebells, pool-shallows, saluted his over-needs, while the clouds growled, heh-heh, & snapped, & crashed.

No stunt hell ever unflinch once more will fail (O lucky fellow, eh Bones?)drifted off upstairs, downstairs, somewheres. No more daily, trying to hit the head on the nail: thirstless: without a think in his head: back from wherever, with it said. Hit a high long note, for a lover found needing a lower into friendlier ground to bug among worms no more around um jungles where ah blurt What for? Weeds, too, he favoured as most men dont favour men. The Garden Masters gone. Here, whence all have departed or will do, here airless, where that witchy ball wanted, fought toward, dreamed of, all a green living drops limply into ones hands without pleasure or interest Figurez-vous, a time swarms when the word happy sheds its whole meaning, like to come and like for memory too That morning arrived to Henry as well a great cheque eaten out already by the Government & State & other strange matters Gentle friendly Henry Pussy-cat smiled into his mirror, a murderers (at Stillwater), at himself alone and said across a plink to that desolate fellow said a little hail & buck-you-up upon his triumph Big Buttons, Cornets: the advance The jane is zoned! no nightspot here, no bar there, no sweet freeway, and no premises for business purposes, no loiterers or needers. Henry are baffled.