Eleven Dream Songs

1.

Henry’s mind grew blacker the more be thought.
He looked onto the world like the act of 
an aged whore.
Delmore, Delmore.
He flung to pieces and they bit the floor.
Nothing was true but that Marcus Aurelius taught,
"All that is foul smell & blood in a bag."

He lookt on the world like the leavings of a bag.
Almost his love died from him, any more.
His mother & William
were vivid in the same mail Delmore died.
The world is lunatic. This is the last ride.
Delmore, Delmore.

High in the summer branches the poet sang.
His throat ached, and he could sing no more.
All ears closed
across the heights where Delmore & Gertrude sprang
so long ago, in the goodness of which it was composed.
Delmore,Delmore!

2. Glimmerings

His hours of thought grew longer, his study less,
the data (he decided) were abundantly his,
or if not, never.
He called on old codes or new apperceptions,
he fought off an anxiety attack as the Lord did nations,
with brutal commitments, not clever.

Almost he lost interest in the 14 books part-done
in favour of insights fresh, a laziness in the sun,
rapid sketchings,
a violent level in the drop of friendship,
"I am pickt up & sorted to a pip,"
sleepless, watching.

Gravediggers all busy, Jelly, look what you done done
there died of late a great cat, a real boss cat
fallen from his prime
I’m sorry for those coming, I'm sorry for everyone
At least my friend is         rid of that
for the present space-time.

3.

He had followers but they could not find him;
friends but they could not find him. He hid his gift
in the center of Manhattan, without a girl, in cheap hotels,
so disturbed on the street friends avoided him
Where did he come by his lift

which all we must or we would rapidly die:
did he remember the more beautiful & fresh poems
of early manhood now? or did his subtle & strict standards allow
them nothing, baffled? What then did self-love show
of the weaker later, somehow?

I'd bleed to say his lovely work improved
but it is not so. He painfully removed
himself from the ordinary contacts
and shook with resentment. What final thought
solaced his fall to the hotel carpet, if any,
& the New York Times's facts?
 

4.

Bitter & bleary over Delmore's dying:
his death stopped clocks, let no activity
mar our hurrah of mourning,
let's all be Jews bereft, for he was one
He died too soon, he liked "An Ancient to Ancients"
His death clouded the grove

I need to hurry this out before I forget
which I will never        He fell on the floor
outside a cheap hotel-room
my tearducts are worn out, the ambulance came
and there on the way he died
He was "smart & kind,"

a child's epitaph. He had no children,
nobody to stand by in the awful years
of the failure of his administration
He was tortured, beyond what man might be
ick & heartbroken Henry sank to his knees
Delmore is dead. His good body lay unclaimed
three days.

5.

I bid you then a raggeder farewell
than at any time my grief would have desired,
you take secrets with you,
sudden appearances, and worse to tell,
vanishings. You said "My head's on fire"
meaning inspired O

meeting on the walk down to Warren House
so long ago we were almost anonymous
waiting for fame to descend
with a scarlet mantle & tell us who we were.
  Young poets are ridiculous, and rare
like a man death-wounded on the mend.

There's a memorial today at N.Y.U.,
your last appearance, old heroic friend.
I hope the girls are pretty
and the remarks radish-crisp befitting you
to allay the horror of your lonely end,
appease, a little, sorrow & pity.

6.

I'm cross with God who has wrecked this generation.
First he seized Ted, then Richard, Randall,
 and now Delmore.
In between he gorged on Sylvia Plath.
That was a first rate haul. He left alive
fools I could number like a kitchen knife
but Lowell he did not touch.

Somewhere the enterprise continues, not–
yellow the sun lies on the baby's blouse–
in Henry's staggered thought.
I suppose the word would be, we must submit.
Later.
I hang, and I will not be part of it.

A friend of Henry's contrasted God's career
with Mozart's, leaving Henry with nothing to say
but praise for a word so apt.
We suffer on, a day, a day, a day.
And never again can come, like a man slapped,
news like this.
 

7.

Flagrant his young male beauty, thick his mind
with lore and passionate, white his devotion
to Gertrude only,
but even that marriage fell on days were lonely
and ended, and the trouble with friends got into motion,
when Delmore undermined

his closest loves with merciless suspicion:
Dwight cheated him out of a house, Saul withheld money,
and then to cap it all,
Henry was not here in '57
during his troubles (Henry was in Asia),
accusations to appall

the Loyal forever, but the demands increast:
as I said, to my house in Providence
at 8 a.m. in a Cambridge taxi,
which he had wait, later he telephoned
at midnight from New York, to bring my family
to New York, leaving my job.

All your bills will be paid, he added, tense.

8.

I can't get him out of my mind, out of my mind,
He was out of his own mind for years,
in police stations & Bellevue.
He drove up to my house in Providence
ho ho at 8 a.m. in a Cambridge taxi
and told it to wait.

He walked my living-room, & did not want breakfast
or even coffee, or even even a drink.
He paced, I'd say Sit down,
it makes me nervous, for a moment he'd sit down,
then pace. After an hour or so I had a drink.
He took it back to Cambridge,
we never learnt why he came, or what he wanted.
His mission was obscure. His mission was real,
but obscure.

I remember his electrical insight as the young man,
his wit & passion, gift, the whole young man
alive with surplus love.

9.

I give in. I must not leave            the scene of this same death
as most of me strains to.
There are all the problems to be sorted out,
the fate of the soul, what it was all about
during its being, and whether he was drunk
at 4 a.m. on the wrong floor too

fighting for air, tearing his sorry clothes
with his visions dying O and O I mourn
again this complex death
Almost my oldest friend should never have been born
to this terrible end, out of which what grows
but an unshaven, disheveled corpse?

The spirit & the joy, in memory
live of him on, the young will read his young verse
for as long as such things go:
why then do I despair, miserable Henry
who knew him all so long, for better & worse
and nearly would follow him below.

10.

Ten songs, one solid block of agony,
I wrote for him, and then I wrote no more.
His sad ghost must aspire
free of my love to its own post, that ghost,
among its fellows, Mozart's Bach's, Delmore's
free of its careful body

high in the shades which line that avenue
where I will gladly walk, beloved of one,
and listen to the Buddha.
His work downhill, I don't conceal from you,
ran and ran out. The brain, shook as if stunned,
I hope he's over that,

flame may his glory in that other place,
for he was fond of fame, devoted to it,
and every first-rate soul
has sacrifices which it puts in play,
I hope he's sitting with his peers: sit, sit,
& recover & be whole.

11.

The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done,
I stand above my father's grave with rage,
often, often before
I've made this awful pilgrimage to one
who cannot visit me, who tore his page
out: I come back for more,

I spit upon this dreadful banker's grave
who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn
O ho alas alas
When will indifference come, I moan & rave
I'd like to scrabble.till I got right down
away down under the grass

and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he's.taking it,.which he sought so hard
we'll tear apart
the mouldering grave clothes ha & then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start.