Read Berryman’s Sonnets for Free Online Page A

and sit down again
    Hard. A butterfly in my shoulder then
    Stops and aches. My stomach swings like a shutter.
    As the undergrounds piston a force of air
    Before their crash into the station, you
    Are felt before your coming, and the platforms shake.
    So light, so small, so far still, to impair
    Action and peace so . . risks we take make true
    Maybe our safeties . . come for our risk’s sake.

[ 61 ]
    Languid the songs I wish I willed . . I try . .
    Smooth songs untroubled like a silver spoon
    To pour your creamy beauty back, warm croon
    Blind, soft . . but I have something in my eye,
    I see by fits, see what there, rapid and sly,
    Difficult, so that it will be off soon,
    I’d better fix it! frantic as a loon,
    Smarting, world-churned, some convulsed song I cry.
    Well . . (also I plead, I have something in mind,
    My bobsled need, the need for me you’ll find
    If you look deeper: study our winter-scene) . .
    Thinking is well, but worse still to be caught
    The wholly beautiful just beyond thought,—
    Small trees in mist far down an endless green!

[ 62 ]
    Tyranny of your car—so much resembles
    Beachwagons all, all with officious hope
    Conscript my silly eyes—offers a trope
    For your grand sway upon these months my shambles:
    Your cleaver now to other women’s brambles
    I’ll not contrast—no, all of you have scope,
    Teeth breasts tongues thighs eyes hair: as rope to rope
    You point to point compare, and the subject trembles.
    What makes yóu then this ominous wide blade
    I’d run from O unless I bleat to die?
    Nothing: you are not: woman blonde, called Lise.
    It is I lope to be your sheep, to wade
    Thick in my cordial blood, to howl and sigh
    As I decide . . if I could credit this.

[ 63 ]
    Here too you came and sat a time once, drinking.
    I could have cut their throats to be alone.
    Yet all the hour I slumped here like a stone
    My heart smiled, I smiled while my heart was sinking.
    Happier than I seemed for their hoodwinking,
    My smile was under . . over . . so was the moan
    Arcane I kept out of the ‘master’ tone
    Native to me I adopted . . my rabid thinking.
    Juggler and cull! and places, words, call up
    Inscrutable disturbance bound to you
    Partout! partout some crowning or some crime;
    As Julian spending a nickel, Wid a dime,
    Mazes of instant silence must pursue,—
    Obsession’s hypocrites, time’s, their own dupe.

[ 64 ]
    The dew is drying fast, a last drop glistens
    White on a damaged leaf not far from me.
    A pine-cone calmed here in a red-brown sea
    Collects its straying forces now and listens:
    A veery calls; south, a slow whistle loosens
    My lone control. The flat sun finally
    Flaws through the evergreen grove, and can be he—
    If Lise comes—our renewed love lights and christens.
    Tarry today? . . weeks the abandoned knoll
    And I have waited. The needles are soft . . feel.
    The village bell, or the college, tells me seven.
    Much longer not sustains—will it again?—
    Castaway time I scrabble tooth and nail,
    I crush a cigarette black, and go down.

[ 65 ]
    Once when they found me, some refrain ‘Quoi faire?’
    Striking my hands, they say repeatedly
    I muttered; although I could hear and see
    I knew no one.—I am silent in my chair,
    And stronger and more cold is my despair
    At last, for I have come into a country
    Whose vivid Queen upon no melody
    Admits me. Manchmal glaub ich, ich kann nicht mehr.
    Song follows song, the chatterer to the fire
    Would follow soon . . Deep in Ur’s royal pits
    Sit still the courtly bodies, a little bowl
    By each, attired to voluntary blitz . .
    In Shub-ad’s grave the fingers of a girl
    Were touching still, when they found her, the strings of her lyre.

[ 66 ]
    Astronomies and slangs to find you, dear,
    Star, art-breath, crowner, conscience! and to chart
    For kids unborn your distal beauty, part
    On part that startles, till you blaze more clear
    And witching than your sister Venus here
    To a late age can, though her senior start
    Is my new insomnia,—swift