Ladderless. Here it is again.
The plateau’s sun makes a continent’s strongest shadows.
What’s 42 to 43?
Into a black place of great blows
from the little mountains from the sea
came. Everything is the same.

Out? Many things are over.
The master from Aragon thought better of the world.
I find somebody as ignorant & crazy as ever,
but old? middle aged? ‘young’?
Answer suddenly, at a loss, soiled,
my mortal enemies: ‘Try to make a song.’

I find I can’t do that. Bears
down friend scythe. ‘Manzo!’ We’ve got to mend.
I seem to have had a lousy thousand years,
two thousand, and I don’t see the end.
I can’t think what to do, or be,
or what will happen to Henry.

—John Berryman (1914-1972)

This is drawn from “Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs.”