Submit a Poem
Get Your Premium Membership
spacer
Pinterest button


Photo of John Berryman

Berryman, John

An American poet considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry.. American poet and scholar

Email Poem - Dream Song 103: I consider a song will be as humming-birdEmail Poem

Dream Song 103: I consider a song will be as humming-bird

 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—
which the poet thought was true; Scarlatti-supple;
but can Henry write it?

Wreckt, in deep danger, he shook once his head,
returning to meditation. And word had sped
all from the farthest West
that Henry was desired: can he get free
of the hanging menace, & this all, and go?
He doesn't think so.

Therefore he shakes and he will sing no more,
much less a song as fast as said, as light,
so deep, so flexing. He broods.
He may, rehearsing, here of his bad year
at the very end, in squalor, ill, outside.
—Happy New Year, Mr Bones.



Comments