Free The Heart Is Strange by John Berryman Page B

loose,
    let me wiggle it out.
    You’ll get a bigger one there, & bite.
    How they loft, how their sizes delight and grate.
    The proportioned, spiritless poems accumulate.
    And they publish them
    away in brutish London, for a hollow crown.
    43
    Father is not himself. He keeps his bed,
    and threw a saffron scum Thursday. God-forsaken words
    escaped him raving. Save,
    Lord, thy servant zealous & just.
    Sam he saw back from Harvard. He did scold
    his secting enemies. His stomach is cold
    while we drip, while
    my baby John breaks out. O far from where he bred!
    44
    Bone of moaning: sung Where he has gone
    a thousand summers by truth-hallowed souls;
    be still. Agh, he is gone!
    Where? I know. Beyond the shoal.
    Still-all a Christian daughter grinds her teeth
    a little. This our land has ghosted with
    our dead: I am at home.
    Finish, Lord, in me this work thou hast begun.
    45
    And they tower, whom the pear-tree lured
    to let them fall, fierce mornings they reclined
    down the brook-bank to the east
    fishing for shiners with crookt pin,
    wading, dams massing, well, and Sam’s to be
    a doctor in Boston. After the divisive sea,
    and death’s first feast,
    and the galled effort on the wilderness endured,
    46
    Arminians, and the King bore against us;
    of an ‘inward light’ we hear with horror.
    Whose fan is in his hand
    and he will thoroughly purge his floor,
    come towards mé. I have what licks the joints
    and bites the heart, which winter more appoints.
    Iller I, oftener.
    Hard at the outset; in the ending thus hard, thus?
    47
    Sacred & unutterable Mind
    flashing thorough the universe one thought,
    I do wait without peace.
    In the article of death I budge.
    Eat my sore breath, Black Angel. Let me die.
    Body a-drain, when will you be dry
    and countenance my speed
    to Heaven’s springs? lest stricter writhings have me declined.
    48
    ‘What are those pictures in the air at night,
    Mother?’ Mercy did ask. Space charged with faces
    day & night! I place
    a goatskin’s fetor, and sweat: fold me
    in savoury arms. Something is shaking, wrong.
    He smells the musket and lifts it. It is long.
    It points at my heart.
    Missed he must have. In the gross storm of sunlight
    49
    I sniff a fire burning without outlet,
    consuming acrid its own smoke. It’s me.
    Ruined laughter sounds
    outside. Ah but I waken, free.
    And so I am about again. I hagged
    a fury at the short maid, whom tongues tagged,
    and I am sorry. Once
    less I was anxious when more passioned to upset
    50
    the mansion & the garden & the beauty of God.
    Insectile unreflective busyness
    blunts & does amend.
    Hangnails, piles, fibs, life’s also.
    But we are that from which draws back a thumb.
    The seasons stream and, somehow, I am become
    an old woman. It’s so:
    I look. I bear to look. Strokes once more his rod.
    51
    My window gives on the graves, in our great new house
    (how many burned?) upstairs, among the elms.
    I lie, & endure, & wonder.
    A haze slips sometimes over my dreams
    and holiness on horses’ bells shall stand.
    Wandering pacemaker, unsteadying friend,
    in a redskin calm I wait:
    beat when you will our end. Sinkings & droopings drowse.
    52
    They say thro’ the fading winter Dorothy fails,
    my second, who than I bore one more, nine;
    and I see her inearthed. I linger.
    Seaborn she wed knelt before Simon;
    Simon I, and linger. Black-yellow seething, vast
    it lies fróm me, mine: all they look aghast.
    It will be a glorious arm.
    Docile I watch. My wreckt chest hurts when Simon pales.
    53
    In the yellowing days your faces wholly fail,
    at Fall’s onset. Solemn voices fade.
    I feel no coverlet.
    Light notes leap, a beckon, swaying
    the titled, sickening ear within. I’ll—I’ll—
    I am closed & coming. Somewhere! I defile
    wide as a cloud, in a cloud,
    unfit, desirous, glad—even the singings veil—
    54
    —You are not ready? You áre ready. Pass,
    as shadow gathers shadow in the welling night.
    Fireflies of childhood torch
    you down. We commit our sister