prose. Well, hell.
I am not writing an autobiography-in-verse, my friends.
Impressions, structures, tales, from Columbia in the Thirties
& the Michaelmas term at Cambridge in ’36,
followed by some later. It’s not my life.
That’s occluded & lost.
That consisted of lectures on St Paul,
scrimmages with women, singular moments
of getting certain things absolutely right.
Laziness, liquor, bad dreams.
That consisted of three wives & many friends,
whims & emergencies, discoveries, losses.
It’s been a long trip. Would I make it again?
But once a Polish belle bared me out & was kind to it.
I don’t remember why I sent this message.
Children! children! form the point of all.
Children & high art.
Money in the bank is also something.
We will all die, & the evidence
is: Nothing after that.
Honey, we don’t rejoin.
The thing meanwhile, I suppose, is to be courageous & kind.
The Minnesota 8 and the Letter-Writers
Here’s one who wants them hanged . A poor sick mind,
signing itself & saying where it’s from:
St Louis Park. Out of the woodwork vermin come.
To crises rise our worst, and (some) our best
to dare illegal deeds in an unpopular cause
defying prison because they feel they ought, because
the sanity & honour seem endangered,
or seem convulsed, of their own country, and
a flaccid people can’t be got to understand
its state without some violence undertaken,
by somebody without a thing to gain,
to shock it into resisting,—one program pain
of treatment back to the health of the body politic:
to stop napalming pint-sized yellow men
& their slant-eyed children, and ground arms & come home again.
O the Signers broke the law, and deserved hanging,
by the weird light of the sage of St Louis Park,
who probably admires them. These bear their rare mark.
Damned
Damned. Lost & damned . And I find I’m pregnant.
It must have been in a shuffle of disrobing
or shortly after.
I confess: I don’t know what to do.
She wept steadily all thro’ the performance.
As soon as I tucked it in she burst into tears.
She had a small mustache but was otherwise gifted,
riding, & crying her heart out.
(She had been married two years) I was amazed.
(Her first adultery) I was scared & guilty.
I said ‘What are you crying for, darling? Don’t .’
She stuttered something & wept on.
She came again & again, twice ejecting me
over her heaving. I turned my head aside
to avoid her goddamned tears,
getting in my beard.
I am busy tired mad lonely & old.
O this has been a long long night of wrest.
I saw her once again: on a busy sidewalk
outside a grocery store
& she was big & I did not say ‘Is it mine?’
I congratulated her.
Brighter it waxeth; it’s almost seven.
Despair
It seems to be DARK all the time.
I have difficulty walking.
I can remember what to say to my seminar
but I don’t know that I want to.
I said in a Song once: I am unusually tired.
I repeat that & increase it.
I’m vomiting.
I broke down today in the slow movement of K.365.
I certainly don’t think I’ll last much longer.
I wrote: ‘There may be horribles.’
I increase that.
(I think she took her little breasts away.)
I am in love with my excellent baby.
Crackles! in darkness HOPE ; & disappears.
Lost arts.
Vanishings.
Walt! We’re downstairs,
even you don’t comfort me
but I join your risk my dear friend & go with you.
There are no matches
Utter, His Father, one word
The Hell Poem
Hospital racket, nurses’ iron smiles.
Jill & Eddie Jane are the souls.
I like nearly all the rest of them too
except when they feed me paraldehyde.
Tyson has been here three heavy months;
heroin. We have the same doctor: She’s improving,
let out on pass tonight for her first time.
A madonna’s oval face with wide dark eyes.
Everybody is jolly, patients, nurses,
orderlies, some psychiatrists. Anguishes;
gnawings. Protractions of return
to the now desired but frightful outer world.
Young Tyson
I am not writing an autobiography-in-verse, my friends.
Impressions, structures, tales, from Columbia in the Thirties
& the Michaelmas term at Cambridge in ’36,
followed by some later. It’s not my life.
That’s occluded & lost.
That consisted of lectures on St Paul,
scrimmages with women, singular moments
of getting certain things absolutely right.
Laziness, liquor, bad dreams.
That consisted of three wives & many friends,
whims & emergencies, discoveries, losses.
It’s been a long trip. Would I make it again?
But once a Polish belle bared me out & was kind to it.
I don’t remember why I sent this message.
Children! children! form the point of all.
Children & high art.
Money in the bank is also something.
We will all die, & the evidence
is: Nothing after that.
Honey, we don’t rejoin.
The thing meanwhile, I suppose, is to be courageous & kind.
The Minnesota 8 and the Letter-Writers
Here’s one who wants them hanged . A poor sick mind,
signing itself & saying where it’s from:
St Louis Park. Out of the woodwork vermin come.
To crises rise our worst, and (some) our best
to dare illegal deeds in an unpopular cause
defying prison because they feel they ought, because
the sanity & honour seem endangered,
or seem convulsed, of their own country, and
a flaccid people can’t be got to understand
its state without some violence undertaken,
by somebody without a thing to gain,
to shock it into resisting,—one program pain
of treatment back to the health of the body politic:
to stop napalming pint-sized yellow men
& their slant-eyed children, and ground arms & come home again.
O the Signers broke the law, and deserved hanging,
by the weird light of the sage of St Louis Park,
who probably admires them. These bear their rare mark.
Damned
Damned. Lost & damned . And I find I’m pregnant.
It must have been in a shuffle of disrobing
or shortly after.
I confess: I don’t know what to do.
She wept steadily all thro’ the performance.
As soon as I tucked it in she burst into tears.
She had a small mustache but was otherwise gifted,
riding, & crying her heart out.
(She had been married two years) I was amazed.
(Her first adultery) I was scared & guilty.
I said ‘What are you crying for, darling? Don’t .’
She stuttered something & wept on.
She came again & again, twice ejecting me
over her heaving. I turned my head aside
to avoid her goddamned tears,
getting in my beard.
I am busy tired mad lonely & old.
O this has been a long long night of wrest.
I saw her once again: on a busy sidewalk
outside a grocery store
& she was big & I did not say ‘Is it mine?’
I congratulated her.
Brighter it waxeth; it’s almost seven.
Despair
It seems to be DARK all the time.
I have difficulty walking.
I can remember what to say to my seminar
but I don’t know that I want to.
I said in a Song once: I am unusually tired.
I repeat that & increase it.
I’m vomiting.
I broke down today in the slow movement of K.365.
I certainly don’t think I’ll last much longer.
I wrote: ‘There may be horribles.’
I increase that.
(I think she took her little breasts away.)
I am in love with my excellent baby.
Crackles! in darkness HOPE ; & disappears.
Lost arts.
Vanishings.
Walt! We’re downstairs,
even you don’t comfort me
but I join your risk my dear friend & go with you.
There are no matches
Utter, His Father, one word
The Hell Poem
Hospital racket, nurses’ iron smiles.
Jill & Eddie Jane are the souls.
I like nearly all the rest of them too
except when they feed me paraldehyde.
Tyson has been here three heavy months;
heroin. We have the same doctor: She’s improving,
let out on pass tonight for her first time.
A madonna’s oval face with wide dark eyes.
Everybody is jolly, patients, nurses,
orderlies, some psychiatrists. Anguishes;
gnawings. Protractions of return
to the now desired but frightful outer world.
Young Tyson
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