“Patriot Henry Loves His Country. Ay”

John Berryman

1914 –

1972

Patriot Henry loved his country. Ay.
So did his great-great-great-great-grandfather. Yea! Yea!
A pride of cowards & pimps,
deceived & lying salesmen, advertisers
on the skids, skids,
bleary “leaders”, booze in Washington & New York.

Skids: when Fatty Arbuckle was found wrong
the company undared release his films:
Lana’s horror
not only by her unnoticed, got her fans,
the gangster-murderer-mother-moll became a hotter item.
With no, or the worst only, public opinion, what is hope?

Henry can’t find language with people so vile
who donno they’re vile.
In cringing emulation they parade
a thing they never heard of—a pianist—
because the Reds will hear, ashamed & disdainful hypocrites
they gave up the last American trait, of doing what you like.

Excerpted from ONLY SING by John Berryman. Edited and with an Introduction by Shane McCrae. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2025 by Martha Mayou and Sara Lissick. All rights reserved.

Filling her compact & delicious body with chicken páprika, she glanced at me twice. Fainting with interest, I hungered back and only the fact of her husband & four other people kept me from springing on her or falling at her little feet and crying 'You are the hottest one for years of night Henry's dazed eyes have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon (despairing) my spumoni.—Sir Bones: is stuffed, de world, wif feeding girls. —Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . .

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart só heavy, if he had a hundred years & more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time Henry could not make good. Starts again always in Henry's ears the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime. And there is another thing he has in mind like a grave Sienese face a thousand years would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly, with open eyes, he attends, blind. All the bells say: too late.

Poems

“Patriot Henry Loves His Country. Ay”

More by this poet

Dream Song 1

Dream Song 4

Dream Song 29

Poems

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“Patriot Henry Loves His Country. Ay”

More by this poet

Dream Song 1

Dream Song 4

Dream Song 29

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