The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (52 page)

is hiding out in six cheap hotels, sorrowful you gaping at me

as I continue to concoct ewe dreams! I would like very much

to be in your hair, in hottest blood, my Saxon Thing was nursed

on Western fiction with Doc Holliday my Christopher

Columbus to help me. But it’s no use, you love Oliver Hardy, he’s

the last of the old-time newsboys. I have a soggy bed.

The storms of Baudelaire fall on Judas’ head

He send out rays of light with that river

We saw it in his hair

No use to call me again it isn’t right

You string a sonnet around your fat gut

And falling on your knees you invent the shoe

For a horse               Don’t cheat

The victory is not always to the sweet

That night arrives again in red

André Breton is a shit! (He sneezed on the rum

Turning it into a pun)     One must live

Even in Colorado (Take that, you horse!)

Now we are all dead

Charles, Ju, you, & Harry James

There is no time(s) past (lost?)      We

Are in The Twentieth Century (The Christian Era), and

The charms (bait) leave

Under the heels of Children.

This man was my friend.

1.

It is after 7 in the evening and raining cold in bed. Next day

12 noon Dick comes by we go to the Museum—with Sandy—

lovely on my naked back through the open window. She has

finished
Nadja
, make entry in my journal, work on my new

poem, go to baby-sitting. Carol came, looking for Dick—kicks

them out. Now I am—I carve a pumpkin. I read
Nadja
. 4 a.m.

—lying naked on the bed. We start talking about Marcel

Duchamp. All try to figure out how pay the rent . . . 12

o’clock . . . ourselves . . . we begin touching one another in

the dark, & she is reading
Prolegomena to Greek Religion
.

She says she is—she takes off my clothes & we laugh. Dick & I

discuss Wallace Fowlie, he gives me a copy of
Nadja
, not to

keep—she says if it’s ever over between us in your mind

please tell me. Talk about Dada, we do, drink whiskey. He

makes coffee. We let him in, he knocks again—at the door—

we show him a copy of
Nadja
—he dissipates—she interprets

it for him in some new way, I translate it for him, he is

sleeping, Dick comes over, we discuss
Nadja
extensively, next

day 12 noon we are all to go To the Museum. (TV Show).

2.

I was charging others to love me, instead
of doing so myself.

3.

The day I see my name in the papers, something
snaps, I’m finished; I sadly enjoy my fame, but
I stop writing.

4.

Now fifty years and nostalgic, I pushed open the door of a

cafe and asked for a small beer. At the next table some beautiful

young women were talking animatedly and my name is

mentioned. “Ah,” said one of them, “he may be old, he may

be homely, but what difference does that make? I’d give

thirty years of my life to become his wife.” I looked at her

with a proud, sad smile, she smiled back in surprise, I got

up, I disappeared.

A drop of boo                 the wounded ham

might be

Saint Francis’s knee

in the sombrero                             of a tree.

Mouth deep

rope                           Owl hoot in spectral radiance

& fix skull

He prays.

his vision

broke                     his brain (lie          a hen visage

a plant among browns and grays.

Crimson pot

pierces finger                  gasp

Drip                fresh drips                    bright                    ow        fring,

Fellow, fring

a miniscule      wrist            limp

on a hollow headless

bone

FOR PAT MITCHELL

When I search the past for you

We who are the waiting fragments of his sky

“I who am about to die”

Then was the drowsy melody of languish

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden

A too resilient mind

Cajoling, scheming, scolding, the cleverest of them all

And so we ride together into the peach state!

(Remain secure from pain preserve thy hate thy heart)

Those are the very rich garments of the poor

The rack and the crucifix of winter, winter’s wild

Which encases me. What about the light that comes in then?

Silence; and in between these silences

The spins and the flowing of night-time.

Praising, that’s it! One ordained to praise

The wind without flesh, without bone

The morning-glory, climbing the morning long

In ordinary places.

Not to mention the chief thing

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

Bouncing a red rubber ball in the veins

Though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings

Melodic sighs of Arabic adventure

Darting into a tender fracas leeward and lee

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet

And you have made the world (and it shall grow)

The last the sole surviving Texas Ranger

The heavy not which you were bringing back alone

Abandoned, almost Dionysian

Why should I climb the look-out?

The child who has fallen in love with maps and charts

Drums in the pre-dawn. In my head my brain

But to be part of the treetops and the blueness, invisible

In red weather.

Questions, oh, I hope they do not find you

I go on loving you like water, but

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Into a symbol. I hate that. I falter. These

Let the snake wait under

My back, for which act

I would not credit comment upon gracefully

How how the brig brig water the damasked roses

But helpless, as blue roses are helpless

The revolution is done. What has a bark, but cannot bite?

I’ve tucked the rushing earth under my legs

By those, to sing of cleanly wantonesse

To walk, and pass long love’s day.

“It is such a beautiful day I had to write you a letter

On along the street. Somewhere a trolley, taking leave

Just to be leaving; hearts light as balloons

mirrored in little silver spoons.”

True voyagers alone are those who leave

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

They never shrink from their fatality

Upon those under lands, the vast

And, without knowing why, say, “Let’s get going! Goodbye.”

& so, sauntered out that door, which was closed.

FOR HARRY FAINLIGHT

Everywhere we went we paid the price, endurement

Of indifference, signs of regeneration: in every

Victim awaits the guest of honor, hawk-like, with

Respect to the unlocking of the dream; this hot breath

That you perfectly feel lingering. It makes you think.

You think of a faience pot, a giant eucalyptus overhung

Against the balustrade, facing assurance in the wind.

You suspect we enjoy these poses. This biggest indifference.

You were succumbing to kisses (the real purpose

Another purpose of the trip) but the trip had been

Moved up. I cared. And so we left.

Wonder changes grooves to form a Winter

Rising with Winter roses near the house. The water

Following the signal, which is following me,

Is lifting me up on the on the wings of the great machine.

(FOR THE
GALLUPS
)

interrupts yr privacy

25 years later

you wait between the dodge and the bush

a basket

between you and your arm:     under it

INSIGHT
(Vol. 1, Nr. 3)

(the condemned man is shielding a

woman, about 25, five feet

eleven inches high, hair dark, curly,

dark eyes; and though not gallant, is pure . . .

the street disappearing

into bush level

two heads above the basket

(“seeking a personal

world, where one’s own

behavior has a code . . .

is no guarantee

of justice, folks.

SUNLIGHT IN

JUNGLE-LAND

•   •   •

that girl wreathed in blue

and that one, in yellow

corporeal

“her hair a wondrous gold”

MAIN-TRAVELED ROADS

(under the sheets)

the community

in their vicinity, is murder.

It keeps us awake.

FOLK LEGENDS do not await Verdicts.

We get on, with provisions.

It (The Dodge) continues.

. . . Your America & mine

are lands to be discovered

and nothing

stirs us to discover

so much as the real

drama of today’s newsmaking people

Blonde on Blonde

It’s enough to make a girl

go out & buy a bottle

of peroxide; and many did.

But not her. She loved

Mencken, her pretty sister

whose shame & sin outshone

her dark, golden curls.

FOR SOTERE TORREGIAN & FAMILY

It’s morning

meaning

it

has arrived:

MERRY XMAS

the center of

my gray window facing life. That’s

a Christmas card, from John Perreault. That’s

Gary Snyder:
A RANGE OF POEMS
. That’s

THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF
& that is

MOTHER

6.

IT’S ALL IN THE STARS

(that’s a book)

CLEAR THE RANGE
!

(That’s a book, by me.)

Nevertheless

she

is not here,

tho it’s all right here

and so are we.

Birds sing in this

my world, I love you

if “you” is bacon,

toast & two eggs, over

light: we’ll share a small coke & read a big boke

before we die.