Berryman’s Sonnets Read Online Free PDF

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    At five I get up sleepless to decide
    What I will not today do; ride out: hear birds
    Antiphonal at the dayspring, and nothing else.

[ 42 ]
    The clots of age, grovel and palsy, crave
    Mádmen: to gasp, unreasonably weep,
    Gravid with ice, staving invincible sleep. . .
    Still as I watch this two tonight I waive
    Half of my fear, envy sues even: grave,
    Easy and light with juniors, he, and steep
    In his honours she, beloved, wholly they keep
    Together, accustomed; hircine excitement gave
    No joy so deep, and died . . Fill my eyes with tears,
    I stare down the intolerable years
    To the mild survival—where, you are where, where?
    ‘I want to take you for my lover’ just
    You vowed when on the way I met you: must
    Then that be all ( Do ) the shorn time we share?

[ 43 ]
    You should be gone in winter, that Nature mourn
    With me your anarch separation, call-
    ing warmth all with you: as more poetical
    Than to be left biting the dog-days, lorn
    Alone when all else burgeons, brides are born,
    Children yet (some) begotten, every wall
    Clasped by its vine here . . crony alcohol
    Comfort as random as the unicorn.
    Listen, for poets are feigned to lie, and I
    For you a liar am a thousand times,
    Scars of these months blazon like a decree:
    I would have you—a liner pulls the sky—
    Trust when I mumble me. Than gin-&-limes
    You are cooler, darling, O come back to me.

[ 44 ]
    Bell to sore knees vestigial crowds, let crush
    One another nations sottish and a-prowl,
    Talon the Norway rat to a barn owl
    At wind-soft midnight; split the sleepy hush
    With sirens; card-hells create; from a tower push
    The frantic hesitator; strike a rowel
    To a sad nag; probe, while they whiten & howl,
    With rubber gloves the prisoners’ genial slush;
    Enact our hammer time; only from time
    Twitch while the wind works my beloved and me
    Once with indulgent tongs for a little free,—
    Days, deer-fleet years, to be a paradigm
    For runaways and the régime’s exiles.
    . . The wind lifts, soon, the cold wind reconciles.

[ 45 ]
    Boy twenty-one, in Donne, shied like a blow,—
    His prose, from poems’ seductive dynamite,—
    I read ‘The adulterer waits for the twilight . .
    The twilight comes, and serves his turn.’ (Not so:
    Midnight or dawn.) I stuttered frightened ‘No,
    Nóne could decline, crookt, ghastly, from the sight
    Of elected love and love’s delicious rite
    Upon the livid stranger Loves forego.’
    . . I am this strange thing I despised; you are.
    To become ourselves we are these wayward things.
    And the lies at noon, months’ tremblings, who foresaw?
    And I did not foresee fraud of the Law
    The scarecrow restraining like a man, its rings
    Blank . . my love’s eyes familiar as a scar!

[ 46 ]
    Are we? You murmur ‘not’. What of the night
    Attack on the dark road we could not contain,
    Twice I slid to you sudden as the stain
    Joy bloods the wanderer at the water’s sight,
    And back, but you writhed on me . . as I write
    I tremble . . trust me not to keep on sane
    Until you whisper ‘Come to me again’
    Unless you whisper soon. O come we soon
    Together dark and sack each other outright,
    Doomed cities loose and thirsty as a dune . .
    Lovers we are, whom now the on-tide licks.
    Our fast of famed sleep stirs, darling, diurnal,—
    Hurry! till we, beginning our eternal
    Junket on the winds, wake like a ton of Styx.

[ 47 ]
    How far upon these songs with my strict wrist
    Hard to bear down, who knows? None is to read
    But you: so gently . . but then truth’s to heed,
    The sole word, near or far, shot in the mist.
    Double I sing, I must, your utraquist,
    Crumpling a syntax at a sudden need,
    Stridor of English softening to plead
    O to you plainly lest you more resist.
    ‘Arthur lay then at Caerlon upon Usk . .’
    I see, and all that story swims back . . red
    Satin over rushes . . Mother’s voice at dusk.
    So I comb times and men to cram you rare:
    ‘Faire looketh Ceres with her yellow Haire’—
    Fairer you far O here lie