Read Berryman’s Sonnets for Free Online

hanging out, between the summer grains,
    Meeting mainly the azure minions of our law.
    Near our fake lake an artificial pool
    Was full of men and women; all the rest,
    Shore for the Fourth. I crookt two roses. Most
    I studied the sky’s involuntary rule.
    I followed a cloud and finally I caught it,
    Springing my ribbon down the world of green . .
    Shadow to shadow, under tropical day . .
    Flat country, slow, alone. So in my pocket
    Your snapshot nightmares where (cloth, flesh between)
    My heart was, before I gave it away.

[ 55 ]
    When I recall I could believe you’d go
    I start. I can’t believe you will come back.
    Months on to Monday, and then Monday’s rack
    Uncertain up the sky unseen winds blow
    Bringing what weather I cannot foreknow.
    Still I see better in my almanac
    Your coming, than in the columns white & black
    My going later. All our plans outgrow
    My local eyes, locked where somehow we draw
    Somewhat together, wince to a single goad,
    Each other steady . . steadily closer . . keep.
    Closer: against the departures of our law
    Let’s Dido-like ‘forge causes of abode’ . .
    Whom the sliding stars wheedle as one to sleep.

[ 56 ]
    Sunderings and luxations, luxe, and grief-
    unending exile from the original spouse,
    Dog-fights! one bites intimate as a louse
    The lousy other, Love the twitching leaf
    Wide to the weather, hangover-long, jag-brief,
    Nulliparous intensities, or as mouse
    To cats the child to broken parents, house
    Sold, books divided . . divorce as a relief . .
    We discussed, drinking, one sad afternoon
    In a Connecticut house in cloudy June,
    Thinking, whoever was mentioned, still of others.
    I thought of you,—come we too to this vile
    Loose fagend? earlier still loves so defile? . .
    Could our incredible marriage . . like all others’ . . ?

[ 57 ]
    Our love conducted as in heavy rain
    Develops hair and lowers its head: the lash
    And weight of rain breed, like the soundless slosh
    Divers make round a wrack, régime, domain
    Invisible, to us inured invisible stain
    Of all our process; also lightning flash
    Limns us audacious and furtive, whom slow crash
    On crash jolt like the mud- and storm-blind Wain.
    If the rain ceased and the unlikely sun
    Shone out! . . whom our stars shake, could we emerge
    Trustful and clear into the common rank,—
    So long deceiving?—Days when Dathan sank
    Quick to the pit not past, darling, we verge
    Daily O there: have strange changes begun?

[ 58 ]
    Sensible, coarse, and moral; in decent brown;
    Its money doling to an orphanage;
    Sober . . well-spirited but sober; sage
    Plain nourishing life nor you nor I could down
    I doubt, our blinkers lost, blood like a clown
    Dancing upon a one-night hot-foot stage,
    Brains in a high wind, high brains, the next page
    Trembling,—the water’s fine, come in and drown.
    Since the corruption of the working classes
    I am speaking of the Eighteenth Century: kisses
    Opening on betrothals, love like a vise.
    Where shawm and flute flutter the twilight, where
    Conjugal, toothless, has a booth at the Fair,
    The Reno brothels boom, suddenly we writhe.

[ 59 ]
    Loves are the summer’s. Summer like a bee
    Sucks our best off, thigh-brushes, and is gone.
    The yellow pollen upon the white winds blown
    Settles. I feel the summer draining me,
    I lean back breathless in an agony
    Of charming loss I suffer without moan,
    Without my love, or with my love alone.
    She left me in the Spring, or I say wé
    Left before there we bloomed our secret garden!
    The ghosts of breezes widowy small paths wander,
    A fruitless bird pipes its surprising sorrow.
    When will she, she come back? . . against whom I harden
    My effortless ghost in vain, who moved asunder
    Flowers at the come of summer beautiful and narrow.

[ 60 ]
    Today is it? Is it today? I shudder
    For nothing in my chair, and suddenly yawn.
    Today I suddenly believe. Since dawn
    When I got up, my muscles like a rudder
    Strain crosswise from this work. I rise and mutter
    Something, and hum, pace,