Read Berryman’s Sonnets for Free Online Page B

sleepless art
    To draw you even . . and to draw you near.
    I prod our English: cough me up a word,
    Slip me an epithet will justify
    My daring fondle, fumble of far fire
    Crackling nearby, unreasonable as a surd,
    A flash of light, an insight: I am the shy
    Vehicle of your cadmium shine . . your choir.

[ 67 ]
    Faith like the warrior ant swarming, enslaving
    Or griding others, you gave me soft as dew,
    My darling, drawing me suddenly into you,
    Your arms’ strong kindness at my back, your weaving
    Thighs agile to me, white teeth in your heaving
    Hard, your face bright and dark, back, as we screw
    Our lives together—twin convulsion—blue
    Crests curl, to rest . . again the ivy waving.
    Faiths other fall. Afterwards I kissed you
    So (Lise) long, and your eyes so waxed, marine,
    Wider I drowned . . light to their surface drawn
    Down met the wild light (derelict weeks I missed you
    Leave me forever) upstreaming; never-seen,
    Your radiant glad soul surfaced in the dawn.

[ 68 ]
    Where the lane from the highway swerves the first drops fell
    Like lead, I bowed my head and drifted up.
    Now in the grove they pat like footsteps, but
    Not hers, Despair’s. In slant lines sentinel
    Silver and thin, it rains so into Hell,
    Unvisited these thousand years. I grope
    A little in the wind after a hope
    For sun before she wakes . . all might be well.
    All might yet be well . . I wandered just
    Down to the upper lane now, the sky was clearing,
    And as I scrawl, the sun breaks. Ah, what use?
    She said if rain, no, —in vain self-abuse
    I lie a fairy well! cloud disappearing
    Not lonelier, leaving like me: we must.

[ 69 ]
    For you am I collared O to quit my dear
    My sandy-haired mild good and most beautiful
    Most helpless and devoted wife? I pull
    Crazy away from this; but too from her
    Resistlessly I draw off, months have, far
    And quarrelling—irrelation—numb and dull
    Dead Sea with tiny aits . . Love at the full
    Had wavered, seeing, foresuffering us here.
    Unhappy all her lone strange life until
    Somehow I friended it. And the Master catches
    Me strongly from behind, and clucks, and tugs.
    He has, has he? my heart-relucting will.
    She spins on silent and the needle scratches.
    —This all, Lise? and stark kisses, stealthy hugs?

[ 70 ]
    Under Scorpion both, back in the Sooner State
    Where the dry winds winnow the soul, we both were born,
    And we have cast our origin, and the Horn
    Neither has frankly scanted, others imitate
    Us; and we have come a long way, late
    For depth enough, betimes enough for torn
    Hangnails of nerves and innocent love, we turn
    Together in this vize lips, eyes, our Fate.
    When the cam slid, the prodigious fingers tightened
    And we began to fuse, weird afternoon
    Early in May (the Third), we both were frightened;
    A month we writhed, in sudden love like a scrimmage;
    June’s wide loss worse; the fortnight after June
    Worst. Vize and woe worked us this perfect image!

[ 71 ]
    Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying
    Wafer and wine to the human wound, we laid
    Ourselves to cure ourselves down: I’m afraid
    Our vestments wanted, but Francis’ friends were crying
    In the nave of pines, sun-satisfied, and flying
    Subtle as angels about the barricade
    Boughs made over us, deep in a bed half made
    Needle-soft, half the sea of our simultaneous dying.
    ‘Death is the mother of beauty.’ Awry no leaf
    Shivering with delight, we die to be well . .
    Careless with sleepy love, so long unloving.
    What if our convalescence must be brief
    As we are, the matin meet the passing bell? . .
    About our pines our sister, wind, is moving.

[ 72 ]
    A Cambridge friend put in,—one whom I used
    To pay small rope at chess to, who in vain
    Luffed up to free a rook,—and through the strain
    Of ten-year-old talk cocktails partly loosed
    I forgot you, forgot you, for the first
    Hour in months of watches . . Mozart’s pain
    I heard then, in the cranny of the hurricane,
    As since the chrisom caught me up immersed
    I have