#52 Silent Song

 http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Dream_Song_52_Silent_Song_by_John_Berryman_analysis.php

This is the first poem of Book III. A record of a stay in the hospital and a turning point, a beginning. “The thing took hold” has such an ominous tone that I have no intention of exploring any notions of B.’s self-dramatization for a while. That’s unfair anyway, but with only second-hand access to the relentless sourcing of pain, isolation, etc. that the poet experienced, and that prompts so many of these poems, it can start feeling that way. It was the wellspring that never stopped flowing. As mere drinker, one can feel sated. Not so much for the poet who needed to do something with this stuff—bottle it and sell it I guess. What “the thing” is that takes hold in the poem, we’ll see. Here’s a poem playing off of that:

 

The Thing Taking Hold

Before it arrives, we’ll hide

In our locked basements
Booby-trapped doors
Set to keep intruders

At bay, or worse, against

The shots and booms, the hurling
Knives, cocked and spring-
Launched through thieves’ hearts.

We’ll chew our dried rations

Grow soft, pale fungi
In pots of dirty water
By the low battery lights

Hunt centipedes

For the yellow crunch
Between our remnant teeth
Gather chewy earthworms
 
Tell odd tales of sunshine
Bauble-bright birdsongs
Air so clear you could breathe
It cool, straight to your lungs.

Our children will laugh

At us and roll innocent
Eyes, not even caring
Amid the low blue hum

Of electric filters, the red

Of blood that still oozes
When our pale skin is cut
On the lids of old cans

That green is a color too

That you had smelled in forests
Fields of mown grass, and ponds.
And why should they believe?

Books with stories old as war—

Hunting parties, and loggers—
Turkeys—and fairy-bugs that blink—
Stories in crumbling books

And their grandpa’s crumbling

Memory, of the green world
He inhaled, and kept eating,
And drank like strong wine.

KZ