Dream Songs

Today is the anniversary of John Berryman's death. So this afternoon we were all (in some sort of miracle) home, and R asked us to choose numbers and then he read us that Dream Song ... D#2 chose #1, which is actually one of my favorites. Bur R also exploded a myth in which I'd long believed (W.H. Auden's assertion that a note was found on Berryman's body which read "Your move. Cal"), so I'm bitter about that.

Dream Song 1: Huffy Henry hid the day

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.