Dream Song 136: While his wife earned the living, in  General   

While his wife earned the living, Rabbi Henry
studied the Torah, writing commentaries
more likely to be burnt than printed.
It was rumoured that they needed revision.
Smiling, kissing, he bent his head not with 'Please'
but with austere requests barely hinted,

like a dog with a bone he worried the Sacred Book
and often taught its fringes.
Imperishable enthusiasms.
I have only one request to make of the Lord,
that I may no longer have to earn my living as a rabbi
'Thou shalt make unto thee any graven image'

The sage said 'I merit long life if only because
I have never left bread-crumbs lying on the ground.
We were tested yesterday & are sound,
Henry's lady & Henry.
It all centered in the end on the suicide
in which I am an expert, deep & wide.'

By John Berryman

Tell Your Friends About It | Print This Poem

Comments

You should be logged in to be able to leave comments

Other poems by John Berryman:

• Dream Song 100: How this woman came by the courage
• Dream Song 101: A shallow lake, with many waterbir
• Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, f
• Dream Song 10: There were strange gatherings. A vo
• Dream Song 110: It was the blue & plain ones. I fo
• Dream Song 111: I miss him. When I get back to cam
• Dream Song 112: My framework is broken, I am comin
• Dream Song 114: Henry in trouble whirped out lonel
• Dream Song 115: Her properties, like her of course
• Dream Song 116: Through the forest, followed, Henr
• Dream Song 118: He wondered: Do I love? all this a
• Dream Song 11: His mother goes. The mother comes &
• Dream Song 120: Foes I sniff, when I have less to
• Dream Song 121: Grief is fatiguing. He is out of i
• Dream Song 124: Behold I bring you tidings of grea
• Dream Song 128: A hemorrhage of his left ear of Go
• Dream Song 129: Thin as a sheet his mother came to
• Dream Song 12: Sabbath
• Dream Song 130: When I saw my friend covered with
• Dream Song 131: Come touch me baby in his waking d
• Dream Song 133: As he grew famous—ah, but what i
• Dream Song 134: Sick at 6 & sick again at 9
• Dream Song 136: While his wife earned the living,
• Dream Song 13: God bless Henry
• Dream Song 14: Life, friends, is boring
• Dream Song 15: Let us suppose, valleys & such ago
• Dream Song 171: Go, ill-sped book, and whisper to
• Dream Song 172: Your face broods
• Dream Song 176: All that hair flashing over
• Dream Song 17: Muttered Henry:—Lord of matter, t
• Dream Song 18: A Strut for Roethke
• Dream Song 19: Here, whence
• Dream Song 20: The Secret of the Wisdom
• Dream Song 22: Of 1826
• Dream Song 23: The Lay of Ike
• Dream Song 25: Henry, edged, decidedly, made up st
• Dream Song 26: The glories of the world struck me
• Dream Song 27: The greens of the Ganges delta foli
• Dream Song 28: Snow Line
• Dream Song 29: There sat down, once, a thing
• Dream Song 2: Big Buttons, Cornets: the advance
• Dream Song 30: Collating bones: I would have liked
• Dream Song 31: Henry Hankovitch, con guítar
• Dream Song 324: An Elegy for W.C.W., the lovely ma
• Dream Song 32: And where, friend Quo, lay you hidi
• Dream Song 35: MLA
• Dream Song 38: The Russian grin bellows his condol
• Dream Song 42: O journeyer, deaf in the mould, ins
• Dream Song 44: Tell it to the forest fire, tell it
• Dream Song 45: He stared at ruin. Ruin stared stra
• Dream Song 48: He yelled at me in Greek
• Dream Song 4: Filling her compact & delicious body
• Dream Song 50: In a motion of night they massed ne
• Dream Song 52: Silent Song
• Dream Song 56: Hell is empty. O that has come to p
• Dream Song 57: In a state of chortle sin--once he
• Dream Song 5: Henry sats in de bar & was odd
• Dream Song 61: Full moon. Our Narragansett gales s
• Dream Song 64: Supreme my holdings, greater yet my
• Dream Song 65: A freaking ankle crabbed his blissf
• Dream Song 6: A Capital at Wells
• Dream Song 70: Disengaged, bloody, Henry rose from
• Dream Song 71: Spellbound held subtle Henry all hi
• Dream Song 72: The Elder Presences
• Dream Song 74: Henry hates the world. What the wor
• Dream Song 75: Turning it over, considering
• Dream Song 77: Seedy Henry rose up shy
• Dream Song 78: Op. posth. no. 1
• Dream Song 81: Op. posth. no. 4
• Dream Song 83: Op. posth. no. 6
• Dream Song 84: Op. posth. no. 7
• Dream Song 85: Op. posth. no. 8
• Dream Song 86: Op. posth. no. 9
• Dream Song 87: Op. posth. no. 10
• Dream Song 88: Op. posth. no. 11
• Dream Song 89: Op. posth. no. 12
• Dream Song 8: The weather was fine. They took away
• Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13
• Dream Song 92: Room 231: the fourth week
• Dream Song 94: Ill lay he long, upon this last ret
• Dream Song 95: The surly cop looked out at me in s
• Dream Song 96: Under the table, no. That last was
• Dream Song 97: Henry of Donnybrook bred like a pig
• Dream Song 98: I met a junior--not so junior--and
• Dream Song 9: Deprived of his enemy, shrugged to a
• Sonnet 115 - All we were going strong last night t
• The Ball Poem
• The Curse
• The Traveller
• Winter Landscape