The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (49 page)

And there you have it:

Not uncommonly provided just handles enough

To open up, close down, repeat, evade, hit, slip, & turn on:

With luck you could have it both ways & better with each change.

“He wanted the quiet, the domestic & the personal . . .”

“It’s really just the sense of around & around.”

“Antlers have grown out the top of my shaggy head.”

“And his conclusions to be unaccompanied by any opinions. . . .”

“You can’t have two insides having an affair.”

“Why not then spiritualize one’s midday food with a little liquor?”

“The question seems prosecutorial.” “The house is lost

In the room.” “Loyalty is hard to explain.”

“Hard fight gets no reward.” “A woman has a spirit of her own.”

“A man’s spirit is built upon experience & rage.”—Max Jacob.

In the air, in the house, in the night, bear with me

“I always chat to the golden partner.”

“I’m working out the structures of men that don’t exist yet.”

“A gladness as remote from ecstasy as it is from fear.”

“To go on telling the story.”

“Give not that which is holy to dog.”

Everything good is from the Indian

Sober dog, O expert caresses

By light that breathes like a hand

Small        immobile          yellow        yo-yo plumage

On the cold bomb-shelter. A cur

Is a pre-sound without a rage

Come with me the nurse ferocity

Whose clouds are really toots from the nearby—it is

A well-lit afternoon

but the lights go on

& you know I’m there.

Back in those previous frames

Is a walk through a town.

It sobers you up

To dance like that. Extraordinary to dance

Like that. Ordinarily, can be seen, dancing

In the streets. Ah, well, thanks for the shoes, god

Like Goethe on his divan at Weimar, I’m wearing them

on my right feet!

“Old gods work”

“I gather up my tics & tilts, my stutters & imaginaries

into the “up” leg

In this can-can . . .” “Are you my philosophy

If I love you which I do . . . ?” “I want to know

It sensationally like the truth;” “I see in waves

Through you past me;” “But now I stop—” “I can love

What’s for wear:” “But I dredge what I’ve bottomlessly canned

When I can’t tell you . . .” “I love natural

Coffee beautifully . . .” “I’m conjugally love

Loose & tight in the same working” “I make myself

Feature by feature” “The angel from which each thing is most itself,

from each, each,”

“I know there’s a faithful anonymous performance”

“I wish never to abandon you” “I me room he” To

“Burn! this is not negligible, being poetic, & not feeble.”

What we have here is Animal Magick: the fox

is crossing the water: he is the forest from whence

he came, and toward which he swims: he is the hawk

circling the waters in the sun; and he is also the foxfire

on each bank in Summer wind. He is also the grandfather clock

that stands in the corner of the bedroom, one eye open, both hands up.

And though I am an Irishman in my American

I have not found in me one single he or she

who would sit on a midden and dream stars: for

Although I hate it, I walk with the savage gods.

“It’s because you are guilty about being another person,

isn’t it?” But back at the organ

The angel was able to play a great green tree

for the opening of the new First National Bank.

And New York City is the most beautiful city in the world

And it is horrible in that sense of hell. But then

So are you. And you, and you, and you, and you, and you.

And no I don’t mean any of you: I just mean you.

FOR DOUGLAS OLIVER

the number two, &

the number three, &

they being the number one

And as I have, almost

unbelievably, passed the

number four, I wonder

Will I ever “reach”, or worse,

Stop at the number Seven?

For though one of me

has a sentimental longing for number

I never have believed in

the Number, Heaven.

But in numberless hells

I never once stopped at eleven.

Since we had changed

The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from

a beach

Today a hockey player died in

the green of days: the chimneys

Morning again, nothing has to be done,

maybe buy a piano or make fudge

Totally abashed and smiling

I walk in

sit down and

face the frigidaire

You say that everything is very simple and interesting

‘the picturesque

common lot’             the unwarranted light

the fever & obscurity of your organisms . . .

on what grounds shall we criticize the City Manager?

TO DOUG & JAN OLIVER

“I order you to operate. I was not made to suffer.”

Probing for old wills, and friendships, for to free

to New York City, to be in History, New York City being

History at that time. “And I traded my nights

for Intensity; & I barter my right to Gold; & I’d traded

my eyes much earlier, when I was circa say seven years old

for ears to hear Who was speaking, & just exactly who

was being told . . . .” & I’m glad

I hear your words so clearly

& I would not have done it

differently

& I’m amused at such simplicity, even so,

inside each & every door. And now I’m with you, instantly,

& I’ll see you tomorrow night, and I see you constantly, hopefully

though one or the other of us is often, to the body-mind’s own self

more or less out of sight! Taking walks down any street, High

Street, Main Street, walk past my doors! Newtown; Nymph Rd

(on the Mesa); Waveland

Meeting House Lane, in old Southampton; or BelleVue Road

in England, etcetera

Other roads; Manhattan; see them there where open or shut up behind

“I’ve traded sweet times for answers . . .”

“They don’t serve me anymore.” They still serve me on the floor.

Or,

as now, as floor. Now we look out the windows, go in &

out the doors. The Door.

(That front door which was but & then at that time My door).

I closed it

On the wooing of Helen. “And so we left schools for her.” For

She is not one bit fiction; & she is easy to see;

& she leaves me small room

For contradiction. And she is not alone; & she is not one bit

lonely in the large high room, &

invention is just vanity, which is plain. She

is the heart’s own body, the body’s own mind in itself

self-contained.

& she talks like you; & she has created truly not single-handedly

Our tragic thing, America. And though I would be I am not afraid

of her, & you also not. You, yourself, I,

Me, myself, me. And no, we certainly have not pulled down

our vanity: but

We wear it lightly here,

here where I traded evenly,

& even gladly

health, for sanity; here

where we live day-by-day

on the same spot.

My English friends, whom I love & miss, we talk to ourselves here,

& we two

rarely fail to remember, although we write seldom, & so must seem

gone forever.

In the stained sky over this morning the clouds seem about to burst.

What is being remembering

Is how we are, together. Like you we are always bothered, except

by the worse; & we are living

as with you we also were

fired, only, mostly, by changes in the weather. For Oh dear hearts,

When precious baby blows her fuse / it’s just our way

of keeping amused.

That we offer of & as excuse. Here’s to you. All the very best.

What’s your pleasure? Cheers.

“who is not here

causes us to drift”

wake up, throat dry,

that way, perpetually,

“and why deprived unless

you feel that you ought to be?” and

“Clarity is immobile.” And, “We are hungry

for devices to keep the baby happy . . .”

She writes, “My hunger creates a food

that everybody needs.”

“I can’t live without you no

matter who you are.” “I think.”

I write this in cold blood,

enjoy.

Yes, it’s true, strategy is fascinating

& watching its workings out of, its

successes & failures, participating even,

can be amusing at times, but

Lords & Ladies do express

the courtly elegance, the

rude vulgarity, only truly

in the self’s own body-mind’s

living daily day-to-day the living

Self-contained containing

self-abandonment as self is

eyes as they caress or

blaze with particular hate, say, at

living being thought while a particularly

self-engrossing mind-game going on is

still, & only, one pronoun temporarily

haranguing the others while

the rest of One’s self waits, truly

impatiently, for blessed natural savagery to arrive,

and finally save the party, by ordering

the musicians to resume their play

& the dancing picks up once again.

Up a hill, short

of breath, then

breathing

Up stairs, & down, & up, & down again

to

NOISE

Your warm powerful Helloes

friends

still slightly breathless

in

a three-way street

hug

Outside

& we can move

& we move

Inside

to Starbursts   of noise!

The human voice is how.

Lewis’s, boyish, & clear; & Allen’s, which persists,

& His,          & Hers,            & all of them Thems,

& then

Anne’s, once again, (and as I am)         “Ted!”

Then

O, Lady!,            O, See,            among all things which exist

O this!, this breathing, we.

The dancer grins at the ground.

The mildest of alchemists will save him.

(Note random hill of chairs). & he will prove

useful to her

in time. The ground to be their floor.

like pennies to a three year old,

like a novel, the right novel, to a 12 year old,

like a 39 Ford to a Highschool kid

like a woman to a man, a girl

who is a woman

is her self ’s own soul

and her man is himself

his own

& whole.

Addenda

& I can’t buy

with submission

& tho I feel often

& why not

battered

I can’t be beaten.

But I have been eaten, 7 times

by myself

& I go my way, by myself, I being

by myself only when useful, as for example,

you are to me now,

to you.

Inhabiting a night with shaky normal taboo hatred and fear

and a steep diagonal body

Peculiar and beautiful language correspond to my ordinary

tension

The major planets are shifting (shivering?) but out of my

natural habit,

Self-kindness,

I play them

something Nashville something quality

and there is the too easy knell of the games chapel

The tempting scornful opposite

Cathedral virus and goof immunization:

The curves of the Spirit are not very interested in