DREAM SONG 133
John Berryman
As he grew famous - ah, but what is fame? -he lost his old obsession with his name,
things seemed to matter less,
including the fame - a television team came
from another country to make a film of him
which did not him distress:
he enjoyed the hard work & he was good at that,
so they all said - the charming Englishmen
among the camera & the lights
mathematically wandered in his pub & livingroom
doing their duty, as too he did it,
but where are the delights
of long-for fame, unless fame makes him feel easy?
I am cold & weary, said Henry, fame makes me feel lazy,
yet I must do my best.
It doesn't matter, truly. It doesn't matter truly.
It seems to be solely a matter of continuing Henry
voicing & obsessed.
DREAM SONG 105
As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative' - teaching at Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote -
Gone With the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No"
and we sat down with War & Peace.
As a man I believed in democracy (nobody
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James Dow,
& I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds,
and I said curious, 'What are your real politics?'
'Oh, I'm a monarchist.'
Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science.
I resign. The universal contempt for Mr. Nixon,
whom I never liked but who
alert & gutsy served us years under a dope,
since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King
maybe, before a few mindless votes.
- The required litany: John Berryman was born 98 years ago today. I was 21 when Pary Gittenger, an English teacher at Montgomery College, Rockville, loaned me his copy of Dream Songs and changed my life. Thank you, Pary.
- STREAM THE NEW NECKS!
- 44 explicit points on creating a better world?
- Let's get this class war started?
- The coercive power of capitalism?
- You want full communism?
- Armed, brutal, cowardly.
- The state as lover from hell.
- Who's winning the internet?
- This is how big a dope I am: I post Jack Spicer, Nurse w Wound, and John Fahey, announce it on twitter, think EVERYONE will go HOLYFUCK! - I mean, Jack Spicer! Nurse w Wound! John Fahey! - and am surprised as always and stupidly disappointed when nobody - nobody - clicks through.
- Prunella was just in Oberlin too.
- Lemming tree.
- Szymborska, for those of you who do and those of you who should.
- In which Dracula is a character in Bolano's 2666.
- Yes, I know I missed Gubaidulina's birthday yesterday. Lots later today and/or tomorrow.
DREAM SONG 29
John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odor, a chime.
And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.
But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.
