Free The Heart Is Strange by John Berryman

foresters
    18
    whose passionless dicker in the shade, whose glance
    impassive & scant, belie their murderous cries
    when quarry seems to show.
    Again I must have been wrong, twice.
    Unwell in a new way. Can that begin?
    God brandishes. O love, O I love. Kin,
    gather. My world is strange
    and merciful, ingrown months, blessing a swelling trance.
    19
    So squeezed, wince you I scream? I love you & hate
    off with you. Ages! Useless . Below my waist
    he has me in Hell’s vise.
    Stalling. He let go. Come back: brace
    me somewhere. No. No. Yes! everything down
    hardens I press with horrible joy down
    my back cracks like a wrist
    shame I am voiding oh behind it is too late
    20
    hide me forever I work thrust I must free
    now I all muscles & bones concentrate
    what is living from dying?
    Simon I must leave you so untidy
    Monster you are killing me Be sure
    I’ll have you later Women do endure
    I can can no longer
    and it passes the wretched trap whelming and I am me
    21
    drencht & powerful. I did it with my body!
    One proud tug greens Heaven. Marvellous,
    unforbidding Majesty.
    Swell, imperious bells. I fly.
    Mountainous, woman not breaks and will bend:
    sways God nearby: anguish comes to an end.
    Blossomed Sarah, and I
    blossom. Is that thing alive? I hear a famisht howl.
    22
    Beloved household, I am Simon’s wife,
    and the mother of Samuel—whom greedy yet I miss
    out of his kicking place.
    More in some ways I feel at a loss,
    freer. Cantablanks & mummers, nears
    longing for you. Our chopping scores my ears,
    our costume bores my eyes.
    St. George to the good sword, rise! chop-logic’s rife
    23
    & fever & Satan & Satan’s ancient fere.
    Pioneering is not feeling well,
    not Indians, beasts.
    Not all their riddling can forestall
    one leaving. Sam, your uncle has had to
    go fróm us to live with God. ‘Then Aunt went too?’
    Dear, she does wait still.
    Stricken: ‘Oh. Then he takes    us one by one.’ My dear.
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    Forswearing it otherwise, they starch their minds.
    Folkmoots, & blether, blether. John Cotton rakes
    to the synod of Cambridge.
    Down from my body my legs flow,
    out from it arms wave, on it my head shakes.
    Now Mistress Hutchinson rings forth a call—
    should she? many creep out at a broken wall—
    affirming the Holy Ghost
    dwells in one justified. Factioning passion blinds
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    all to all her good, all—can she be exiled?
    Bitter sister, victim! I miss you.
    —I miss you, Anne,
    day or night weak as a child,
    tender & empty, doomed, quick to no tryst.
    —I hear you. Be kind, you who leaguer
    my image in the mist.
    —Be kind you, to one unchained eager far & wild
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    and if, O my love, my heart is breaking, please
    neglect my cries and I will spare you. Deep
    in Time’s grave, Love’s, you lie still.
    Lie still. —Now? That happy shape
    my forehead had under my most long, rare,
    ravendark, hidden, soft bodiless hair
    you award me still.
    You must not love me, but    I do not bid you cease.
    27
    Veiled my eyes, attending. How can it be I?
    Moist, with parted lips, I listen, wicked.
    I shake in the morning & retch.
    Brood I do on myself naked.
    A fading world I dust, with fingers new.
    —I have earned the right to be alone with you.
    —What right can that be?
    Convulsing, if you love, enough, like a sweet lie.
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    Not that, I know, you can. This cratered skin,
    like the crabs & shells of my Palissy ewer, touch!
    Oh, you do, you do?
    Falls on me what I like a witch,
    for lawless holds, annihilations of law
    which Time and he and man abhor, foresaw:
    sharper than what my Friend
    brought me for my revolt when I moved smooth & thin,
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    faintings black, rigour, chilling, brown
    parching, back, brain burning, the grey pocks
    itch, a manic stench
    of pustules snapping, pain floods the palm,
    sleepless, or a red shaft with a dreadful start
    rides at the chapel, like a slipping heart.
    My soul strains in one qualm
    ah but this is not to save me but to throw me down.
    30
    And out of this I lull. It