Berryman

Song for John Berryman

Snow enshrouds the Mississippi.
January in Minnesota,
the world is silent and white.
He dreams of Florida.
He dreams deep into the night.
The ocean beckons like a mistress,

he longs for a kiss.
He once had a plan
but he failed as a pilot
and fell as a man.
The world is silent and white.
He dreams deep into the night.

January in Minnesota,
the ocean beckons like a mistress,
he longs for a kiss.
He once had a plan
but he failed as a pilot
and fell as a man.


My favorite Berryman poem:

Dream Song #279

Leaving behind the country of the dead
where he must then return & die himself
he set his tired face due East
where the sun rushes up the North Atlantic
and where had paused a little the war for bread
& the war for status has ceased

forever, and he took with him five books,
a Whitman & a Purgatorio,
a one-volume dictionary,
an Oxford Bible with all its bays & nooks
& bafflements long familiar to Henry
& one other new book-O.

If ever he had crafted in the past—
but only if—he swore now to craft better
which lay in the Hands above.
He said: I’ll work on slow, O slow & fast,
if a letter comes I will answer that letter
& my whole year will be tense with love.