Berryman’s Sonnets Read Online Free PDF Page B

filteréd.

[ 48 ]
    I’ve met your friend at last, your violent friend,
    Laughter out of a hard life; and she out,
    Treating in talk one door really as shut
    That should be shut, gashes will hardly mend.
    ‘Here is Katrina’ at the other end
    Of telephones . . ‘Heck, I feel wonderful! . .’
    And so do I when I am with her, but
    I would she knew she lashed me where I bend.
    And so do I when I am with her, only
    Her ‘they’ and ‘harmony’ harry me lone and wild.
    . . How she loves you! and then to disarrange,
    Powerful chemist, all the years she’s filed
    With stubborn work, for the law! . . she means to change.
    So do I mean,—less (when I rise up) lonely.

[ 49 ]
    One note, a daisy, and a photograph,
    To slake this siege of weeks without you, all.
    Your dawn-eyed envoy, welcome as Seconal,
    To call you faithful . . now this cenotaph,
    A shabby mummy flower. Note I keep safe,
    Nothing, on a ration slip a social scrawl—
    Not that it didn’t forth some pages call
    Of my analysis, one grim paragraph.
    The snapshot then—your eyes down, your hair bound:
    Your power leashed, but too your blaze is dim . .
    By the sea, thinking, long before we met;
    Akimbo from your nape, what petrels round
    (Out of the print) your unsuspicious slim
    Dear figure, warning ‘Dream of him
           now you not know whom you will not forget.’

[ 50 ]
    They come too thick, hail-hard, and all beside
    Batter, necessities of my nights and days,
    My proper labour that my storm betrays
    Weekly lamented, weakly flung aside;
    What in the musical wind to work but glide
    Among the wind, willing my eyes should daze
    Fast on her image, for an exhaustless phrase,
    While themes throng, the rapt world one & hers & wide.
    They crowd on, crowning what I perforce complain
    Remorseful in my journal of, and lest
    Thick they fall thin, I beg the calm belongs,—
    Traditional meditation. But when my rein
    Fails most, still I race feeble to protest
    These two months . . decades of excited songs.

[ 51 ]
    A tongue there is wags, down in the dark wood O:
    Trust it not. It trills malice among friends,
    Irrelevant squibs and lies, to its own ends
    Or to no ends, simply because it would O.
    To us, us most I hear, it prinks no good O;
    Has its idea, Jamesian; apprehends
    Truth non-aviarian; meddles, and ‘defends’
    Honour free . . that such a bill so wily should O!
    Who to my hand all year flew to be fed
    Makes up his doubts to dart at us . . Ah well,
    Did you see the green of that catalpa tree?—
    A certain jackal will lose half its head
    For cheek, our keek, our hairy philomel.—
    How can you tell?—A little bird told me.

[ 52 ]
    A sullen brook hardly would satisfy
    The Winter-traveller slumps near, Stony Brook;
    Prattle of brooks it scorns, only in some crook
    Fetches again and now a muddy sigh
    Reaches me here.—A liner rocks the sky,
    I shudder beneath the trees. I brought a book,
    Shut on my brown knee. Once I rise and look
    Under the bridge-arch. The third day of July.
    Close, going back, I pass (still as a mouse)
    The fatuous stranger in the stone strong home
    Now you and my friend your husband are away.
    And I must gnaw there somewhy. Double day:
    In the end I race by cocky as a comb,
    Adust . . Da ist meiner Liebstens Haus.

[ 53 ]
    Some sketch sweat’ out, unwilling swift & crude,
    A hundred more like bats in swelter-day
    A-lunge about my office, I’m away
    Downstairs for coffee, and to rest, and brood.
    . . The mots fly, and the flies mope on the food
    Where all-age adolescents swig and bray,
    An ice-cream-soda jag, the booths are gay . .
    The ass-eyes after me unlid, protrude.
    And I have fled antcrazy to my task
    In the hotbox at the top of Upper Wyne
    To work their children music! as ice cubes
    Pleasing, colder keeping, more than they ask,
    As worthy of them—not of you . . No sign . .
    Ermite-amateur in the midst of the boobs.

[ 54 ]
    It was the sky all day I grew to and saw.
    I cycled southeast through the empty towns,
    Flags