LXVII (The Sonnets)
(clarity! clarity!) a semblance of motion, omniscience.
There is no such thing as a breakdown
To cover the tracks of “The Hammer” (the morning sky
gets blue and red and I get worried about
mountains of mounting pressure
and the rust on the bolt in my door
Some kind of Bowery Santa Clauses I wonder
down the secret streets of Roaring Gap
A glass of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
Bearden is dead. Chris is dead. Jacques Villon is dead.
Patsy awakens in heat and ready to squabble
I wonder if people talk about me secretly? I wonder if I’m
fooling myself
about pills? I wonder what’s in the icebox? out we go
to the looney movie and the grace of the make-believe bed
Used with permission of University of California Press, from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan by Ted Berrigan © 2005; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
Ted Berrigan
Ted Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. He attended Providence College for a year before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 at the age of nineteen. After serving in the Korean War, he received a BA in English from the University of Tulsa in 1959 and an MA in 1962.