All Poems
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Dream Song 101: A shallow lake, with many waterbirds
© John Berryman
A shallow lake, with many waterbirds,
especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,
An extraordinary vivid dream
of Betty & Douglass, and Donâhis mother's estate
was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.
He showed me around.
The Conquerors
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Round the wide earth, from the red field your valour has won,
Blown with the breath of the far-speaking gun,
Goes the word.
Bravely you spoke through the battle cloud heavy and dun.
Tossed though the speech toward the mist-hidden sun,
The world heard.
Dream Song 127: Again, his friend's death made the man sit still
© John Berryman
Again, his friend's death made the man sit still
and freeze insideâhis daughter won first priceâ
his wife scowled over at himâ
It seemed to be Hallowe'en.
His friend's death had been adjudged suicide,
which dangles a trail
Like Some Wild Sleeper
© Mathilde Blind
Like some wild sleeper who alone at night
Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
With death below and only stars above;
I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep,
Along the edges of life's perilous steep,
The lost somnambulist of love.
Dream Song 132: A Small Dream
© John Berryman
and I say go to bed! We'll meet tomorrow,
acres of threats dissolve into a smile,
you'll be the Little Baby
again, while I pursue my path of sorrow
& bodies, bodies, to be carried a mile
& dropt. Maybe
Lord Robert
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Tall and young and light of tongue,
Gallantly riding by wood and lea,
Sonnet 96
© John Berryman
An instant there is, Sophoclean, true,
When Oedipus must understand: his head
When Oedipus believestilts like a wave,
And will not break, only iov iov
Wells from his dreadful mouth, the love he led:
Prolong to Procyon this. This begins my grave.
Dream Song 76: Henry's Confession
© John Berryman
Nothin very bad happen to me lately.
How you explain that? âI explain that, Mr Bones,
terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.
Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,
what could happen bad to Mr Bones?
âIf life is a handkerchief sandwich,
Dream Song 28: Snow Line
© John Berryman
It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be eat
nothing. I am usually tired.
I'm alone too.
Lines Suggested By The Graves Of Two English Soldiers On The Concord Battle-Ground
© James Russell Lowell
The same good blood that now refills
The dotard Orient's shrunken veins,
Dream Song 40: I'm scared a lonely. Never see my son
© John Berryman
I'm scared a lonely. Never see my son,
easy be not to see anyone,
combers out to sea
know they're goin somewhere but not me.
Got a little poison, got a little gun,
I'm scared a lonely.
You And Your Body
© Edgar Albert Guest
WHOM is your boy going to for advice?
Tough Johnny Jones at the end of the street,
Rough Billy Green or untaught Jimmy Price?
Who is now guiding his innocent feet?
Who takes him walking or swimming today,
You, or the stranger just over the way?
Dream Song 2: Big Buttons, Cornets: the advance
© John Berryman
The jane is zoned! no nightspot here, no bar
there, no sweet freeway, and no premises
for business purposes,
no loiterers or needers. Henry are
baffled. Have ev'ybody head for Maine,
utility-man take a train?
Catharina
© William Cowper
She came--she is gone--we have met--
And meet perhaps never again;
The sun of that moment is set,
And seems to have risen in vain.
Dream Song 13: God bless Henry
© John Berryman
God bless Henry. He lived like a rat,
with a thatch of hair on his head
in the beginning.
Henry was not a coward. Much.
He never deserted anything; instead
he stuck, when things like pity were thinning.
The Veil Of Maya
© Edith Nesbit
SWEET, I have loved before. I know
This longing that invades my days;
This shape that haunts life's busy ways
I know since long and long ago.
Dream Song 29: There sat down, once, a thing
© 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 odour, a chime.
Moonrise Over Tyringham
© Edith Wharton
Now the high holocaust of hours is done,
And all the west empurpled with their death,
How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun,
How little while the dusk remembereth!
Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage
© John Berryman
How this woman came by the courage, how she got
the courage, Henry bemused himself in a frantic hot
night of the eight of July,
where it came from, did once the Lord frown down
upon her ancient cradle thinking 'This one
will do before she die
The Day Of Dead Soldiers
© Emma Lazarus
WELCOME, thou gray and fragrant Sabbath-day,
To deathless love and valor dedicate!
Glorious with the richest flowers of May,
With early roses, lingering lilacs late,
