John Berryman Poems

It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that.
My own clouds darkening hung.
Besides, it wasn't serious.
They took them in different rooms & fed them lies.
...

My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,
God send it soon. When I had most to say
my tongue clung to the roof
I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady's birthday
...

I consider a song will be as humming-bird
swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange
as the world of anti-matter
where they are wondering: does time run backward—
...

His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.
Chen Lung's too came, came and crampt & then
that dragoner's mother was gone.
It seem we don't have no good bed to lie on,
...

A shallow lake, with many waterbirds,
especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,
An extraordinary vivid dream
of Betty & Douglass, and Don—his mother's estate
...

Through the forest, followed, Henry made his silky way,
No chickadee was troubled, small moss smiled
on his swift passage.
But there were those ahead when at midday
...

The sunburnt terraces which swans make home
with water purling, Macchu Pichu died
like Delphi long ago—
a message to Justinian closing it out,
...

Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
...

Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines.
When ich when was ever not in trouble?
But did he whip out whines
afore? And when check in wif ales & lifelines
...

Three 'coons come at his garbage. He be cross,
I figuring porcupine & took Sir poker
unbarring Mr door,
& then screen door. Ah, but the little 'coon,
...