The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Read online

XXIII

  On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar

  Between Oologah and Pawnee

  A hand is writing these lines

  In a roomful of smoky man names burnished dull black

  Southwest, lost doubloons rest, no comforts drift

  On dream smoke down the sooted fog ravine

  In a terrible Ozark storm the Tundra vine

  Blood ran like muddy inspiration: Walks he in around anyway

  The slight film has gone to gray-green children

  And seeming wide night. Now night

  Is a big drink of waterbugs Then were we so fragile

  Honey scorched our lips

  On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar

  Between Oologah and Pawnee

  XXV

  Mud on the first day (night, rather

  I was thinking of Bernard Shaw, of sweet May Morris

  Do you want me to take off my dress?

  Some Poems!

  the aeroplane waiting to take you on your first

  getting used to using each other

  Cowboys! and banging on my sorrow, with books

  The Asiatics

  believed in tree spirits, a tall oak, swans gone in the rain,

  a postcard of Juan Gris not a word

  Fell on the floor how strange to be gone in a minute

  I came to you by bus to be special for us

  The bellboy letters a key then to hear from an old stranger

  The Gift: they will reside in Houston following the Grand Canyon.

  XXVI

  ONE SONNET FOR DICK

  This excitement to be all of night, Henry!

  Elvis Peering-Eye danced with Carol Clifford, high,

  Contrived whose leaping herb edifies Kant! I’ll bust!

  Smile! “Got rye in this’n?”

  Widow Dan sold an eye t’meander an X. Whee! Yum!

  Pedant tore her bed! Tune, hot! Full cat saith why foo?

  “Tune hot full cat?” “No! nexus neck ink!

  All moron (on) while “weighed in fur” pal! “Ah’m Sun!”

  Dayday came to get her daddy. “Daddy,”

  Saith I to Dick in the verge, (In the Verge!)

  And “gee” say I, “Easter” “fur” “few tears” “Dick!”

  My Carol now a Museum! “O, Ma done fart!” “Less full

  Cat,” she said, “One’s there!” “Now cheese, ey?”

  “Full cat wilted, bought ya a pup!” “So, nose excitement?”

  XXVII

  Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon

  Bar. If only the Greeks were a band-

  Aid, he thought. Then my woe would not flow

  O’er the land. He considered his honeydew

  Hand. “O woe, woe!” saith Andrew, “a fruit

  In my hand may suffice to convey me to Greece,

  But I must have envy to live! A grasshopper,

  George, if you please!” The bartender sees

  That our Andrew’s awash on the sofa

  Of wide melancholy. His wound he refurbishes

  Stealthily shifty-eyed over the runes. “Your

  Trolleycar, sir,” ’s said to Andy, “you bloody

  Well emptied the Parthenon!” “A fruitful vista

  This Our South,” laughs Andrew to his Pa,

  But his rough woe slithers o’er the Land.

  XXVIII

  to gentle, pleasant strains

  just homely enough

  to be beautiful

  in the dark neighborhoods of my own sad youth

  i fall in love. once

  seven thousand feet over one green schoolboy summer

  i dug two hundred graves,

  laughing, “Put away your books! Who shall speak of us

  when we are gone? Let them wear scarves

  in the once a day snow, crying in the kitchen

  of my heart!” O my love, I will weep a less bitter truth,

  till other times, making a minor repair,

  a breath of cool rain in those streets

  clinging together with slightly detached air.

  XXIX

  Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear

  Calm before a storm. Yet your brooding eyes

  Or acquiescence soon cease to be answers.

  And your soft, dark hair, a means of speaking

  Becomes too much to bear. Sometimes,

  In a rare, unconscious moment,

  Alone this sudden darkness in a toybox

  Christine’s classic beauty, Okinawa

  To Laugh (Autumn gone, and Spring a long way

  Off ) is loving you

  When need exceeds means,

  I read the Evening World / the sports,

  The funnies, the vital statistics, the news:

  Okinawa was a John Wayne movie to me.

  XXX

  Into the closed air of the slow

  Now she guards her chalice in a temple of fear

  Each tree stands alone in stillness

  to gentle, pleasant strains

  Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.

  Andy Butt was drunk in the Parthenon

  Harum-scarum haze on the Pollock streets

  This excitement to be all of night, Henry!

  Ah, Bernie, to think of you alone, suffering

  It is such a good thing to be in love with you

  On the green a white boy goes

  He’s braver than I, brother

  Many things are current, and of these the least are

  not always children

  On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar

  XXXI

  And then one morning to waken perfect-faced

  To the big promise of emptiness

  In a terrible Ozark storm

  Pleasing John Greenleaf Whittier!

  Speckled marble bangs against his soiled green feet

  And each sleeping son is broke-backed and dumb

  In fever and sleep processional

  Voyages harass the graver

  And grope underneath the most serious labor

  Darius feared the boats. Meanwhile

  John Greenleaf Whittier was writing. Meanwhile

  Grandma thought wistfully of international sock fame

  Down the John G. Whittier Railroad Road

  In the morning sea mouth

  XXXII

  The blue day! In the air winds dance

  Now our own children are strangled down in the bubbling

  quadrangle.

  To thicken! He felt his head

  Returning past the houses he passed

  “Goodbye, Bernie!” “Goodbye, Carol!” “Goodbye, Marge!”

  Davy Crockett was nothing like Jesse James

  A farmer drove up on a tractor

  He said he was puzzled by the meaning exactly of “block.”

  The blue day! Where else can we go

  To escape from our tedious homes, and perhaps recapture

  the past?

  Now our own children are returning past the houses

  I sit at my dust-patterned desk littered with four month

  dust

  The air beginning to thicken

  In the square, on the farm, in my white block hair

  XXXIII

  Où sont les neiges des neiges?

  The most elegant present I could get.

  The older children weep among the flowers.

  They believe this. Their laughter feeds the need

  Like a juggler. Ten weeks pregnant. Who

  Believes this? It is your love

  Must feed the dancing snow, Mary

  Shelley “created” Frankenstein. It doesn’t

  matter, though. The shortage of available materials

  Shatters my zest with festivity, one

  Trembling afternoon—night—the dark trance

  Up rainy cobblestones bottle half empty

  Full throttle mired

&nb
sp; In the petty frustrations of off-white sheets

  XXXIV

  Time flies by like a great whale

  And I find my hand grows stale at the throttle

  Of my many faceted and fake appearance

  Who bucks and spouts by detour under the sheets

  Hollow portals of solid appearance

  Movies are poems, a holy bible, the great mother to us

  People go by in the fragrant day

  Accelerate softly my blood

  But blood is still blood and tall as a mountain blood

  Behind me green rubber grows, feet walk

  In wet water, and dusty heads grow wide

  Padré, Father, or fat old man, as you will,

  I am afraid to succeed, afraid to fail

  Tell me now, again, who I am

  XXXV

  You can make this swooped transition on your lips

  Go to the sea, the lake, the tree

  And the dog days come

  Your head spins when the old bull rushes

  Back in the airy daylight, he was not a midget

  And preferred to be known as a stunt-man.

  His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely.

  Why do you begin to yawn so soon, who seemed

  So hard, feather-bitten back in the airy daylight

  Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces

  of glass

  Spins when the old bull rushes. The words say I LOVE YOU

  Go to the sea, the lake, the tree

  Glistering, bristling, cozening whatever disguises

  XXXVI

  AFTER FRANK O’HARA

  It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July and

  it’s probably 8:54 in Manhattan but I’m

  in Brooklyn I’m eating English muffins and drinking

  pepsi and I’m thinking of how Brooklyn is New

  York city too how odd I usually think of it as

  something all its own like Bellows Falls like Little

  Chute like Uijongbu

  I never thought on the Williamsburg

  bridge I’d come so much to Brooklyn

  just to see lawyers and cops who don’t even carry

  guns taking my wife away and bringing her back

  No

  and I never thought Dick would be back at Gude’s

  beard shaved off long hair cut and Carol reading

  his books when we were playing cribbage and

  watching the sun come up over the Navy Yard

  across the river

  I think I was thinking when I was

  ahead I’d be somewhere like Perry street erudite

  dazzling slim and badly loved

  contemplating my new book of poems

  to be printed in simple type on old brown paper

  feminine marvelous and tough

  XXXVII

  It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears

  Have blossomed in my eyes. Guillaume Apollinaire is dead.

  The big green day today is singing to itself

  A vast orange library of dreams, dreams

  Dressed in newspaper, wan as pale thighs

  Making vast apple strides towards “The Poems.”

  “The Poems” is not a dream. It is night. You

  Are asleep. Vast orange libraries of dreams

  Stir inside “The Poems.” On the dirt-covered ground

  Crystal tears drench the ground. Vast orange dreams

  Are unclenched. It is night. Songs have blossomed

  In the pale crystal library of tears. You

  Are asleep. A lovely light is singing to itself,

  In “The Poems,” in my eyes, in the line, “Guillaume

  Apollinaire is dead.”

  XXXVIII

  Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons

  For you I starred in the movie

  Made on the site

  Of Benedict Arnold’s triumph, Ticonderoga, and

  I shall increase from this

  As I am a cowboy and you imaginary

  Ripeness begins corrupting every tree

  Each strong morning A man signs a shovel

  And so he digs It hurts and so

  We get our feet wet in air we love our lineage

  Ourselves Music, salve, pills, kleenex, lunch

  And the promise never to truckle A man

  Breaks his arm and so he sleeps he digs

  In sleep half silence and with reason

  Mess Occupations

  AFTER MICHAUX

  A few rape men or kill coons so I bat them!

  Daughter prefers to lay ’em on a log and tear their hair.

  Moaning Jimmy bats her!

  “Ill yeah!” da junky says. “I aint as fast no more,

  I’ll rent a lot in a cemetree.” He’ll recite it

  two times scary sunday O sea-daisy o’er a shade!

  Au revoir, scene!

  She had a great toe!

  She-tail’s raggy, too!

  Jelly bend over put ’im on too!

  She laid a crab!

  Jelly him sure later! Jelly-ass ails are tough!

  She lays all his jelly on him!

  Eeeeeeooooowww!! La Vie!

  Her lay races is out here, she comes on, I’m on her, I’ll

  fart in one ear! “Jelly, sir?” “Shall I raise him yet?”

  Long-toed we dance on where Shit-toe can see ten blue men

  lickin’ ten new partners and the sucker’s son!

  “Mating, Madame, can whip you up up!

  My Jimmy’s so small he wiggles plum moans! Ladies shimmy

  at Jimmy in waves

  XL

  Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides

  In the morning she wakes up, and she is “in love.”

  One red finger sports a gold finger-gripper

  Curled to honor La Pluie, by Max Jacob. Max Jacob,

  When I lie down to love you, I am one hundred times more

  A ghost! My dreams of love have haunted you for years

  More than six-pointed key olive shame. Not this day

  Shall my pale apple dreams know my dream “English

  muffins, broken arm”

  Nor my dream where the George Gordon gauge reads, “a

  Syntactical error, Try Again!” Gosh, I gulp to be here

  In my skin, writing, The Dwarf of Ticonderoga. Icy girls

  finger thighs bellies apples in my dream the big gunfire

  sequence

  For the Jay Kenneth Koch movie, Phooey! I recall

  My Aunt Annie and begin.

  XLI

  banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love”

  my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of

  the west

  my hands make love to my body when my arms are around you

  you never tell me your name

  and I am forced to write “belly” when I mean “love”

  Au revoir, scene!

  I waken, read, write long letters and

  wander restlessly when leaves are blowing

  my dream a crumpled horn

  in advance of the broken arm

  she murmurs of signs to her fingers

  weeps in the morning to waken so shackled with love

  Not me. I like to beat people up.

  My dream a white tree

  XLII

  She murmurs of signs to her fingers

  Not this day

  Breaks his arm and so he sleeps he digs

  Dressed in newspaper, wan as pale thighs

  beard shaved off long hair cut and Carol reading

  Put away your hair. The black heart beside the 15 pieces

  of glass

  Of my many faceted and fake appearance

  The most elegant present I could get!

  “Goodbye, Bernie!” “Goodbye, Carol!” “Goodbye,

  Marge!”

  Speckled marble bangs against his soil
ed green feet

  And seeming wide night. Now night

  Where Snow White sleeps amongst the silent dwarfs

  Drifts of Johann Strauss

  It is 5:15 a.m. Dear Marge, hello.

  XLIII

  in my paintings for they are present

  Dreams, aspirations of presence! And he walks

  Wed to wakefulness, night which is not death

  Rivers of annoyance undermine the arrangements

  We remove a hand . . .

  washed by Joe’s throbbing hands. ‘Today

  itself “a signal.” She

  is introspection.

  Each tree stands alone in stillness

  Scanning the long selves of the shore.

  In Joe Brainard’s collage, there is no such thing

  as a breakdown.

  Trains go by, and they are trains. He hears the feet of the men

  Racing to beg him to wait

  XLIV

  The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see

  A watchdog barks in the night

  Joyful ants nest in the roof of my tree

  There is only off-white mescalin to be had

  Anne is writing poems to me and worrying about “making it”

  and Ron is writing poems and worrying about “making it”

  and Pat is worrying but not working on anything

  and Gude is worrying about his sex life

  It is 1959, and I am waiting for the mail

  Who cares about Tuesday (Jacques Louis David normalcy day)?

  Boston beat New York three to one. It could have been

  Carolyn. Providence is as close to Montana as Tulsa.

  He buckles on his gun, the one Steve left him:

  His stand-in was named Herman, but came rarely

  XLV

  What thwarts this fear I love

  to hear it creak upon this shore

  of the trackless room; the sea, night, lilacs

  all getting ambiguous

  Who dreams on the black colonnade

  Casually tossed off as well

  Are dead after all (and who falters?)

  Everything turns into writing

  I strain to gather my absurdities into a symbol

  Every day my bridge

  They basted his caption on top of the fat sheriff, “The Pig.”