Dream Song 11: His mother goes. The mother comes & goes.

Portrait of John Berryman
John Berryman 1914–1972
1177 Dream Songs

His mother goes. The mother comes & goes. Chen Lung's too came, came and crampt & then that dragoner's mother was gone. It seem we don't have no good bed to lie on, forever. While he drawing his first breath, while skinning his knees,

while he was so beastly with love for Charlotte Coquet he skated up & down in front of her house wishing he could, sir, die, while being bullied & he dreamt he could fly— during irregular verbs—them world-sought bodies safe in the Arctic lay:

Strindberg rocked in his niche, the great Andrée by muscled Fraenkel under what's of the tent, torn like then limbs, by bears over fierce decades, harmless. Up in pairs go we not, but we have a good bed. I have said what I had to say.

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