Read 77 Dream Songs for Free Online

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    The name of this was freedom.
    Will Henry again ever be on the lookout for women & milk,
    honour & love again,
    have a buck or three?
    He felt like shrieking but he shuddered as
    (spring mist, warm, rain) an handful with quietness
    vanisht & the thing took hold.

53
    He lay in the middle of the world, and twitcht.
    More Sparine for Pelides,
    human (half) & down here as he is,
    with probably insulting mail to open
    and certainly unworthy words to hear
    and his unforgivable memory.
    —I seldom go to films. They are too exciting,
    said the Honourable Possum.
    —It takes me so long to read the ’paper,
    said to me one day a novelist hot as a firecracker,
    becauseI have to identify myself with everyone in it,
    including the corpses, pal.’
    Kierkegaard wanted a society, to refuse to read ’papers,
    and that was not, friends, his worst idea.
    Tiny Hardy, toward the end, refused to say anything,
    a programme adopted early on by long Housman,
    and Gottfried Benn
    said:—We are using our own skins for wallpaper and we cannot win.

54
    ‘ NO VISITORS ’ I thumb the roller to
    and leans against the door.
    Comfortable in my horseblanket
    I prop on the costly bed & dream of my wife,
    my first wife,
    and my second wife & my son.
    Insulting, they put guardrails up,
    as if it were a crib!
    I growl at the head nurse; we compose on one.
    I have been operating from nothing,
    like a dog after its tail
    more slowly, losing altitude.
    Nitid. They are shooting me full of sings.
    I give no rules. Write as short as you can,
    in order, of what matters.
    I think of my beloved poet
    Issa & his father who
    sat down on the grass and took leave of each other.

55
    Peter’s not friendly. He gives me sideways looks.
    The architecture is far from reassuring.
    I feel uneasy.
    A pity,—the interview began so well:
    I mentioned fiendish things, he waved them away
    and sloshed out a martini
    strangely needed. We spoke of indifferent matters—
    God’s health, the vague hell of the Congo,
    John’s energy,
    anti-matter matter. I felt fine.
    Then a change came backward.A chill fell.
    Talk slackened,
    died, and he began to give me sideways looks.
    ‘Christ,’ I thought ‘what now?’ and would have askt for another
    but didn’t dare.
    I feel my application     failing. It’s growing dark,
    some other sound is overcoming. His last words are:
    ‘We betrayed me.’

56
    Hell is empty. O that has come to pass
    which the cut Alexandrian foresaw,
    and Hell lies empty.
    Lightning fell silent where the Devil knelt
    and over the whole grave space hath settled awe
    in a full death of guilt.
    The tinchel closes. Terror, & plunging, swipes.
    I lay my ears back. I am about to die.
    My cleft feet drum.
    Fierce, the two-footers club. My green world pipes
    a finish—forus all, my love, not some.
    Crumpling, I—why,—
    So in his crystal ball them two he weighs,
    solidly, dreaming of his sleepy son,
    ah him, and his new wife.
    What roar solved once the dilemma of the Ancient of Days,
    what sigh borrowed His mercy?—Who may, if
    we are all the same, make one.

57
    In a state of chortle sin—once he reflected,
    swilling tomato juice—live I, and did
    more than my thirstier years.
    To Hell then will it maul me? for good talk,
    and gripe of retail loss? I dare say not.
    I don’t thínk there’s that place
    save sullen here, wherefrom she flies tonight
    retrieving her whole body, which I need.
    I recall a ’coon treed,
    flashlights, & barks, and I was in thattree,
    and something can (has) been said for sobriety
    but very little.
    The guns. Ah, darling, it was late for me,
    midnight, at seven. How in famished youth
    could I foresee Henry’s sweet seed
    unspent across so flying barren ground,
    where would my loves dislimn whose dogs abound?
    I fell out of the tree.

58
    Industrious, affable, having brain on fire,
    Henry perplexed himself; others gave up;
    good girls gave in;
    geography was hard on friendship, Sire;
    marriages lashed &