The Heart Is Strange (14 page)

         bent over, and shook his head at me.

Tubes all over, useless versus coma,

on the third day his principal physician

told me to pray he’d die, brain damage such.

         His bare stub feet stuck out.

II

So much for the age’s prodigy, born one day

before I surfaced—when this fact emerged

Dylan grew stuffy and would puff all up

         rearing his head back and roar

‘A little more—more—
respect
there, Berryman!’

Ah he had thát,—so far ahead of me,

I half-adored him for his intricate booms & indecent tales

         almost entirely untrue.

Scorn bottomless for elders: we were twenty-three

but Yeats I worshipped: he was amused by this,

all day the day set for my tea with the Great Man

         he plotted to turn me up drunk.

Downing me daily at shove-ha’penny

with
English
on the thing. C—— would slump there

plump as a lump for hours, my world how that changed!

         Hard on her widowhood—

III

Apart a dozen years, sober in Seattle

‘After many a summer’ he intoned

putting out a fat hand. We shook hands.

         How very shook to see him.

His talk, one told me, clung latterly to Eden,

again & again of the Garden & the Garden’s flowers,

not ever the Creator, only of that creation

         with a radiant will to go there.

I have sat hard for twenty years on this

mid potpals’ yapping, and O I sit still still

though I quit crying that same afternoon

         of the winter of his going.

Scribbled me once, it’s around somewhere or other,

word of their ‘Edna Millay cottage’ at Laugharne

saying come down to and disarm a while

         and down a many few.

O down a many few, old friend,

and down a many few.

Tampa Stomp

The first signs of the death of the boom came in the summer,

early, and everything went like snow in the sun.

Out of their office windows. There was miasma,

a weight beyond enduring, the city reeked of failure.

The eerie, faraway scream of a Florida panther,

gu-roomp of a bull-frog. One broker we knew

drunk-driving down from Tarpon Springs flew free

when it spiralled over & was dead without one mark on him.

The Lord fled that forlorn peninsula

of fine sunlight and millions of fishes & moccasins

& Spanish moss & the Cuban bit my father

bedded & would abandon Mother for.

Ah, an antiquity, a chatter of ghosts.

Half the fish now in half the time

since those blue days died. We’re running out

of time & fathers, sore, artless about it.

The Handshake, The Entrance

‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley’ and

‘You’ve got to cross it by yourself.’

‘Ain’t no one gwine cross it for you,

You’ve got to cross it by yourself.’

Some say John was a baptist, some say John was a Jew,

some say John was just a natural man

addin’ he’s a preacher too?

‘You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley,’

Friends & lovers, link you and depart.

This one is strictly for me.

I shod myself & said goodbye to Sally

Murmurs of other farewells half broke my heart

I set out sore indeed.

The High King failed to blossom on my enterprise.

Solely the wonderful sun shone down like lead.

Through the ridges I endured,

down in no simple valley I opened my eyes,

with my strong walk down in the vales & dealt with death.

I increased my stride, cured.

Henry by Night

Henry’s nocturnal habits were the terror of his women.

First it appears he snored, lying on his back.

Then he thrashed & tossed,

changing position like a task fleet. Then, inhuman,

he woke every hour or so—they couldn’t keep track

of mobile Henry, lost

at 3 a.m., off for more drugs or a cigarette,

reading old mail, writing new letters, scribbling

excessive Songs;

back then to bed, to the old tune or get set

for a stercoraceous cough, without quibbling

death-like. His women’s wrongs

they hoarded & forgave, mysterious, sweet;

but you’ll admit it was no way to live

or even keep alive.

I won’t mention the dreams I won’t repeat

sweating & shaking: something’s gotta give:

up for good at five.

Henry’s Understanding

He was reading late, at Richard’s, down in Maine,

aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,

my good wife long in bed.

All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,

putting the marker in the book, & sleep,

& wake to a hot breakfast.

Off the coast was an island, P’tit Manaan,

the bluff from Richard’s lawn was almost sheer.

A chill at four o’clock.

It only takes a few minutes to make a man.

A concentration upon now & here.

Suddenly, unlike Bach,

& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me

that
one
night, instead of warm pajamas,

I’d take off all my clothes

& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff

into the terrible water & walk forever

under it out toward the island.

Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up

I thought I’d say a thing to please myself

& why not him, about his talent, to him

or to some friend who’d maybe pass it on

because he printed a sweet thing about me

a long long time ago, & because of gladness

to see a good guy
get out
of the advertising racket

& suddenly make like the Great Chicago Fire—

yes that was it, fine, fine—(this was a dream

woke me just now)—I’ll get a pen & paper

at once & put that down, I thought, and I went

away from where I was, up left thro’ a garden

in the direction of the Avenue

but got caught on a smart kid’s escalator

going uphill against it, got entangled,

a girl was right behind me in the dark,

they hoisted up some cart and we climbed on

& over the top &
down
, thinking Jesus

I’ll break my arse but a parked car broke the fall

I landed softly there in the dark street

having forgotten all about    the Great Chicago Fire!

A Usual Prayer

According to Thy will: That this day only

I may avoid the vile

and baritone away in a broader chorus

of to each other decent forbearance & even aid.

Merely sensational let’s have today,

lacking mostly thinking,—

men’s thinking being eighteen-tenths deluded.

Did I get this figure out of St Isaac of Syria?

For fun: find me among    my self-indulgent artbooks

a new drawing by Ingres!

For discipline, two self-denying minus-strokes

and my wonted isometrics, barbells, & antiphons.

Lord of happenings, & little things,

muster me westward fitter to my end—

which has got to be Your strange end for me—

and toughen me effective to the tribes en route.

‘How Do You Do, Dr Berryman, Sir?’

Edgy, perhaps.
Not
on the point of bursting-forth,

but toward that latitude,—I think?
Not
‘shout loud & march straight.

Each lacks something in some direction. I

am not entirely at the mercy of.

The tearing of hair no.

Pickt up pre-dawn & tortured and detained,

Mr Tan Mam and many other students

sit tight but vocal in illegal cells

and as for Henry Pussycat    he’d just as soon be dead

(on the Promise of—I know it sounds incredible—

if can he muster penitence enough—

he can’t though—

glory

King David Dances

Aware to the dry throat of the wide hell in the world

O trampling empires, and mine one of them,

and mine one gross desire against His sight

slaughter devising there,

some good behind, ambiguous ahead,

revolted sons, a pierced son, bound to bear,

mid hypocrites amongst idolaters,

mockt in abysm by one shallow wife,

with the ponder both of priesthood & of State

heavy upon me, yea,

all the black same I dance my blue head off!

FROM

Henry’s Fate & Other Poems, 1967–1972

(1977)

Canal smell. City that lies on the sea like a cork

of stone & gold, manifold throng your ghosts

of murdered & distraught.

St Mark’s remains came here covered with pork,

stolen from Islam. Freedom        & power, the Venetian hosts

cluttered blue seas where they sought

the wingèd lion on the conquered gates.

Doge followed Doge down down, the city floated.

Vassals drencht maps.

Fat popes & emperors to the high altar, hates

soothed into peace here. Nothing went unnoted

by the Patriarch perhaps

for a thousand years, when Henry struck his forehead

over his strange eyes & his monstrous beard

ah-ing ‘This is too much.’

Canal smell, the Byzantine beauty of the dead,

with lovers arm in arm by the basin, weird

to Henry as such.

Gulls chains voices bells: honey we’re home.

I don’t care whether they cremate Henry or not.

His labour of travel is done

He came upon some shore one time like foam

but had to set out again or rot

with his life on him like a ton.

Unlike this feverish voyaging where new facts turned up

hourly, monthly, among stale voyagers

mostly American

loud rich & rude & petty, whom God also will call to a stop

without the languages, bitches without their curs.

Rats across the Quai Voltaire run, can

frighten you honey at dusk or an Arab Street:

we knew that: Henry had the wit to be afraid

and so my dear love were you.

The ship bangs in. We relax in defeat,

stiffen to the new acquaintances to be made

& the sky over our graves is blue.

Henry under construction was Henry indeed:

gigantic cranes faltered under the load,

spark-showers from the welding played

with daylight, crew after crew

replaced each other like Kings, all done anew

Daily, to the horror of the gathering crowd

which gazed in a silence of awe or sobbed aloud.

The structure huge mounted apace. Some sang,

others in prayer knelt; when the western wing

was added, one vast sigh

arose & made its way into the earless sky.

Lifts were installed, many had their ashes hauled.

Parents in the throng looked down appalled,

In the end the mighty roof was hoisted on.

The event transpired throughout the city at dawn,

foot upon violent foot

converged to shining Henry in the risen sun,

question tormented the multitude one by one

to see to what use it would now be put.

Long (my dear) ago, when rosaries

based Henry’s vaulting thought, at seven & six,

Henry perceived in the sky

your form amidst his stars. He fought to please

you & God daily. Seldom wicked tricks

surfaced into his I.

Malice remained, in this man, moribund

unto this hour and even at this hour

it’s sleepy & can’t bother.

Let demons do. But evils other conned

Henry sufficiently to blot or sour

your forms & the form of Father.

I was
the
altar-boy he depended on

on freezing twilit mornings, after good dreams.

Since when my dreams have changed.

Could Father wrong occurred to Henry gone

fearful, grown. Out of the world of seems

our death has us estranged.

20/21 Feb 68 (second) 1:50 a.m.

With arms outflung the clock announced: Ten-twenty.

Dozens of demons sprang & preyed on Henry.

All on a heavy morning.

The baby was ill, the sky was dark, the I

was Id, somebody put the sky on like a lid,

somebody who is not returning.

Oh we’ll wait. After all, after all.

The Doubter & the rest. They rested all,

on the night of the crucifying.

Perhaps their dreams were something truly remarkable.

Perhaps their dreams had what to do with his dying—

but that was very lonely.

Haldol & Serax, phenobarbital,

Vivactil, by day; by deep night Tuinal

& Thorazine,

kept Henry going, like a natural man.

I’m waiting for them to work, as sometimes they can,

honey, in the bloodstream.

June 68

Good words & irreplaceable: serenade, schadenfreude,

angst & malheur, we need them, we bow to them:

what raving genius

in our past coined such wisdom? I cannot know.

Nor can you, my deep dear. You cannot know.

They were ineffable.

Who coined despair? I hope you never hear,

my lovely dear, of any such goddamned thing.

Set it up on a post

and ax the post down while the angels sing,

& bury the stenchful body loud & clear

with an appropriate toast.

Who made you up? That was a thin disguise:

the soul shows through. You are my honey dear.

Come, come & live with me.

I can deal with everything but your eyes