Read The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan Online
Authors: Alice Notley
And there you have it:
Not uncommonly provided just handles enough
To open up, close down, repeat, evade, hit, slip, & turn on:
With luck you could have it both ways & better with each change.
“He wanted the quiet, the domestic & the personal . . .”
“It’s really just the sense of around & around.”
“Antlers have grown out the top of my shaggy head.”
“And his conclusions to be unaccompanied by any opinions. . . .”
“You can’t have two insides having an affair.”
“Why not then spiritualize one’s midday food with a little liquor?”
“The question seems prosecutorial.” “The house is lost
In the room.” “Loyalty is hard to explain.”
“Hard fight gets no reward.” “A woman has a spirit of her own.”
“A man’s spirit is built upon experience & rage.”—Max Jacob.
In the air, in the house, in the night, bear with me
“I always chat to the golden partner.”
“I’m working out the structures of men that don’t exist yet.”
“A gladness as remote from ecstasy as it is from fear.”
“To go on telling the story.”
“Give not that which is holy to dog.”
Everything good is from the Indian
Sober dog, O expert caresses
By light that breathes like a hand
Small immobile yellow yo-yo plumage
On the cold bomb-shelter. A cur
Is a pre-sound without a rage
Come with me the nurse ferocity
Whose clouds are really toots from the nearby—it is
A well-lit afternoon
but the lights go on
& you know I’m there.
Back in those previous frames
Is a walk through a town.
It sobers you up
To dance like that. Extraordinary to dance
Like that. Ordinarily, can be seen, dancing
In the streets. Ah, well, thanks for the shoes, god
Like Goethe on his divan at Weimar, I’m wearing them
on my right feet!
“Old gods work”
“I gather up my tics & tilts, my stutters & imaginaries
into the “up” leg
In this can-can . . .” “Are you my philosophy
If I love you which I do . . . ?” “I want to know
It sensationally like the truth;” “I see in waves
Through you past me;” “But now I stop—” “I can love
What’s for wear:” “But I dredge what I’ve bottomlessly canned
When I can’t tell you . . .” “I love natural
Coffee beautifully . . .” “I’m conjugally love
Loose & tight in the same working” “I make myself
Feature by feature” “The angel from which each thing is most itself,
from each, each,”
“I know there’s a faithful anonymous performance”
“I wish never to abandon you” “I me room he” To
“Burn! this is not negligible, being poetic, & not feeble.”
What we have here is Animal Magick: the fox
is crossing the water: he is the forest from whence
he came, and toward which he swims: he is the hawk
circling the waters in the sun; and he is also the foxfire
on each bank in Summer wind. He is also the grandfather clock
that stands in the corner of the bedroom, one eye open, both hands up.
And though I am an Irishman in my American
I have not found in me one single he or she
who would sit on a midden and dream stars: for
Although I hate it, I walk with the savage gods.
“It’s because you are guilty about being another person,
isn’t it?” But back at the organ
The angel was able to play a great green tree
for the opening of the new First National Bank.
And New York City is the most beautiful city in the world
And it is horrible in that sense of hell. But then
So are you. And you, and you, and you, and you, and you.
And no I don’t mean any of you: I just mean you.
FOR DOUGLAS OLIVER
the number two, &
the number three, &
they being the number one
And as I have, almost
unbelievably, passed the
number four, I wonder
Will I ever “reach”, or worse,
Stop at the number Seven?
For though one of me
has a sentimental longing for number
I never have believed in
the Number, Heaven.
But in numberless hells
I never once stopped at eleven.
Since we had changed
The smell of snow, stinging in nostrils as the wind lifts it from
a beach
Today a hockey player died in
the green of days: the chimneys
Morning again, nothing has to be done,
maybe buy a piano or make fudge
Totally abashed and smiling
I walk in
sit down and
face the frigidaire
You say that everything is very simple and interesting
‘the picturesque
common lot’ the unwarranted light
the fever & obscurity of your organisms . . .
on what grounds shall we criticize the City Manager?
TO DOUG & JAN OLIVER
“I order you to operate. I was not made to suffer.”
Probing for old wills, and friendships, for to free
to New York City, to be in History, New York City being
History at that time. “And I traded my nights
for Intensity; & I barter my right to Gold; & I’d traded
my eyes much earlier, when I was circa say seven years old
for ears to hear Who was speaking, & just exactly who
was being told . . . .” & I’m glad
I hear your words so clearly
& I would not have done it
differently
& I’m amused at such simplicity, even so,
inside each & every door. And now I’m with you, instantly,
& I’ll see you tomorrow night, and I see you constantly, hopefully
though one or the other of us is often, to the body-mind’s own self
more or less out of sight! Taking walks down any street, High
Street, Main Street, walk past my doors! Newtown; Nymph Rd
(on the Mesa); Waveland
Meeting House Lane, in old Southampton; or BelleVue Road
in England, etcetera
Other roads; Manhattan; see them there where open or shut up behind
“I’ve traded sweet times for answers . . .”
“They don’t serve me anymore.” They still serve me on the floor.
Or,
as now, as floor. Now we look out the windows, go in &
out the doors. The Door.
(That front door which was but & then at that time My door).
I closed it
On the wooing of Helen. “And so we left schools for her.” For
She is not one bit fiction; & she is easy to see;
& she leaves me small room
For contradiction. And she is not alone; & she is not one bit
lonely in the large high room, &
invention is just vanity, which is plain. She
is the heart’s own body, the body’s own mind in itself
self-contained.
& she talks like you; & she has created truly not single-handedly
Our tragic thing, America. And though I would be I am not afraid
of her, & you also not. You, yourself, I,
Me, myself, me. And no, we certainly have not pulled down
our vanity: but
We wear it lightly here,
here where I traded evenly,
& even gladly
health, for sanity; here
where we live day-by-day
on the same spot.
My English friends, whom I love & miss, we talk to ourselves here,
& we two
rarely fail to remember, although we write seldom, & so must seem
gone forever.
In the stained sky over this morning the clouds seem about to burst.
What is being remembering
Is how we are, together. Like you we are always bothered, except
by the worse; & we are living
as with you we also were
fired, only, mostly, by changes in the weather. For Oh dear hearts,
When precious baby blows her fuse / it’s just our way
of keeping amused.
That we offer of & as excuse. Here’s to you. All the very best.
What’s your pleasure? Cheers.
“who is not here
causes us to drift”
wake up, throat dry,
that way, perpetually,
“and why deprived unless
you feel that you ought to be?” and
“Clarity is immobile.” And, “We are hungry
for devices to keep the baby happy . . .”
She writes, “My hunger creates a food
that everybody needs.”
“I can’t live without you no
matter who you are.” “I think.”
I write this in cold blood,
enjoy.
Yes, it’s true, strategy is fascinating
& watching its workings out of, its
successes & failures, participating even,
can be amusing at times, but
Lords & Ladies do express
the courtly elegance, the
rude vulgarity, only truly
in the self’s own body-mind’s
living daily day-to-day the living
Self-contained containing
self-abandonment as self is
eyes as they caress or
blaze with particular hate, say, at
living being thought while a particularly
self-engrossing mind-game going on is
still, & only, one pronoun temporarily
haranguing the others while
the rest of One’s self waits, truly
impatiently, for blessed natural savagery to arrive,
and finally save the party, by ordering
the musicians to resume their play
& the dancing picks up once again.
Up a hill, short
of breath, then
breathing
Up stairs, & down, & up, & down again
to
NOISE
Your warm powerful Helloes
friends
still slightly breathless
in
a three-way street
hug
Outside
& we can move
& we move
Inside
to Starbursts of noise!
The human voice is how.
Lewis’s, boyish, & clear; & Allen’s, which persists,
& His, & Hers, & all of them Thems,
& then
Anne’s, once again, (and as I am) “Ted!”
Then
O, Lady!, O, See, among all things which exist
O this!, this breathing, we.
The dancer grins at the ground.
The mildest of alchemists will save him.
(Note random hill of chairs). & he will prove
useful to her
in time. The ground to be their floor.
like pennies to a three year old,
like a novel, the right novel, to a 12 year old,
like a 39 Ford to a Highschool kid
like a woman to a man, a girl
who is a woman
is her self ’s own soul
and her man is himself
his own
& whole.
Addenda
& I can’t buy
with submission
& tho I feel often
& why not
battered
I can’t be beaten.
But I have been eaten, 7 times
by myself
& I go my way, by myself, I being
by myself only when useful, as for example,
you are to me now,
to you.
Inhabiting a night with shaky normal taboo hatred and fear
and a steep diagonal body
Peculiar and beautiful language correspond to my ordinary
tension
The major planets are shifting (shivering?) but out of my
natural habit,
Self-kindness,
I play them
something Nashville something quality
and there is the too easy knell of the games chapel
The tempting scornful opposite
Cathedral virus and goof immunization:
The curves of the Spirit are not very interested in