#34

http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Dream_Song_34_My_mother_has_your_shotgun_One_man_wide_by_John_Berryman_analysis.php

Dedicated to Robert Fitzgerald, poet and translator. Much of Fitzgerald’s best-known work comes from his translations of Greek and Latin classics.

Most of the references in DS 34 are too of a moment, fleeting and particular for me to track down. What is discernible in the fragments explain themselves.

In response to the dedication to a great translator, here is a poem about meaning and translation.

Message

A sleeping tiger in a canyon at the city zoo

No mighty will standing stupefied this afternoon
One cool cat asleep in Cincinnati here
Like the great cats asleep under snow in Siberia
And Gir tigers sleeping in their crowded Bengal park
Malay tigers asleep in humid jungles: All arch
Their liquid spines, assert a dark and simple be
The insouciant know of now, and confidently
Dare he who would to question a tiger’s claim
On Earth to sleep just when and where he damn well may.
The big cat yawns, maiming yellow fangs designed
To crush the shivering quick from a struggling sambar’s spine
Gleam unconfined, four ivory daggers, his violent
Privilege asserted by teeth and talons, sent
By a God bent only on the care of This His Tiger.
He stretches and stands, ripples the brawn beneath his fur,
Emanates an earthquake purr, lifts his tail
And turns and shakes as if his be and know entail
Creation, then pisses on the flailing crowd his rank
Brown urine. Such grant of musk and tiger wins no thanks              
From the gawking bank of ticketholders parting
Like a crowd before the Pope’s advance, waiting
His gaze, then darting from the way of something holy.
One single drop finds the toe of my shoe, the oily
Stuff a chrism wholly welcome to my humble foot,
And I take it home. Our cat, who meets me, sniffs my boot
Translates the root word “fear” with her eyes. Then stays—
A learnèd reader—beneath the bed for three whole days.
 
KZ