Time poems
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Dream Song 86: Op. posth. no. 9
© John Berryman
The conclusion is growing . . . I feel sure, my lord,
this august court will entertain the plea
Not Guilty by reason of death.
I can say no more except that for the record
I add that all the crimes since all the times he
died will be due to the breath
Dream Song 92: Room 231: the fourth week
© John Berryman
Tulips from Tates teazed Henry in the mood
to be a tulip and desire no more
but water, but light, but air.
Yet his nerves rattled blackly, unsubdued,
& suffocation called, dream-whiskey'd pour
sirening. Rosy there
Famam Librosque Cano
© Ezra Pound
A book is known by them that read
That same. Thy public in my screed
Is listed. Well! Some score years hence
Behold mine audience,
As we had seen him yesterday.
The Hoofs Of The Horses
© William Henry Ogilvie
The hoofs of the horses! Oh! witching and sweet
Is the music earth steals from the iron-shod feet;
No whisper of lover, no trilling of bird
Can stir me as hoofs of the horses have stirred.
Dream Song 123: Daples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north
© John Berryman
Dapples my floor the eastern sun, my house faces north,
I have nothing to say except that it dapples my floor
and it would dapple me
if I lay on that floor, as-well-forthwith
I have done, trying well to mount a thought
not carelessly
Dream Song 95: The surly cop looked out at me in sleep
© John Berryman
The surly cop looked out at me in sleep
insect-like. Guess, who was the insect.
I'd asked him in my robe
& hospital gown in the elevator politely
why someone saw so many police around,
and without speaking he looked.
Dream Song 80: Op. posth. no. 3
© John Berryman
It's buried at a distance, on my insistence, buried.
Weather's severe there, which it will not mind.
I miss it.
O happies before & during & between the times it got married.
I hate the love of leaving it behind,
deteriorating & hopeless that.
Life
© William Schwenck Gilbert
First you're born - and I'll be bound you
Find a dozen strangers round you.
Dream Song 59: Henry's Meditation in the Kremlin
© John Berryman
Down on the cathedrals, as from the Giralda
in a land no crueller, and over the walls
to domes & river look
from Great John's belfry, Ivan-Veliky,
whose thirty-one are still
to hail who storms no father's throne. Bell, book
Dream Song 103: I consider a song will be as humming-bird
© John Berryman
I consider a song will be as humming-bird
swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange
as the world of anti-matter
where they are wondering: does time run backwardâ
which the poet thought was true; Scarlatti-supple;
but can Henry write it?
Sonnet To John Hamilton Reynolds
© John Keats
O that a week could be an age, and we
Felt parting and warm meeting every week,
Then one poor year a thousand years would be,
The flush of welcome ever on the cheek:
Dream Song 88: Op. posth. no. 11
© John Berryman
In slack times visit I the violent dead
and pick their awful brains. Most seem to feel
nothing is secret more
to my disdain I find, when we who fled
cherish the knowings of both worlds, conceal
more, beat on the floor,
Writ On The Eve Of My 32nd Birthday
© Gregory Corso
I am 32 years old
and finally I look my age, if not more.
Dream Song 110: It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that
© John Berryman
It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that.
My own clouds darkening hung.
Besides, it wasn't serious.
They took them in different rooms & fed them lies.
'She admitted you wanted to get rid of it.'
'He told us he told you to.'
Not The Pilot
© Walt Whitman
NOT the pilot has charged himself to bring his ship into port, though
beaten back, and many times baffled;
Answer To A Beautiful Poem, Entitled 'The Common Lot'
© George Gordon Byron
MONTGOMERY! true, the common lot
Of mortals lies in Lethe's wave;
Yet some shall never be forgot,
Some shall exist beyond the grave.
Dream Song 51: Our wounds to time, from all the other times
© John Berryman
Our wounds to time, from all the other times,
sea-times slow, the times of galaxies
fleeing, the dwarfs' dead times,
lessen so little that if here in his crude rimes
Henry them mentions, do not hold it, please,
for a putting of man down.
To William Wordsworth. Composed On The Night After His Recitation Of A Poem On The Growth Of An Indi
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Friend of the Wise! and Teacher of the Good!
Into my heart have I received that Lay
More than historic, that prophetic Lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
The Borough. Letter IX: Amusements
© George Crabbe
aloud;
She who will tremble if her eye explore
"The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on
Dream Song 125: Bards freezing, naked, up to the neck in water
© John Berryman
Bards freezing, naked, up to the neck in water,
wholly in dark, time limited, different from
initiations now:
the class in writing, clothed & dry & light,
unlimited time, till Poetry takes some,
nobody reads them though,
