There Sat Down, Once, a Thing on Henry's Heart

Strolling these days through The Dream Songs by John Berryman. Here he is in Dublin, 1967, reciting Dream Song 29.

Only the Irish-American poet, Liam Moore, who used to performed several Dream Songs amidst a Velvet-Undergroundesque swirl of feedback, comes close to Berryman reading the original.



Dream Song 29
by 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.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.