Fall

The Mississippi River downstream from the Washington Avenue Bridge, Minneapolis

“Fall comes to us as a prize

To rouse us toward our fate.”

—John Berryman, Dream Song no. 385

Berryman’s Dream Songs used to puzzle me.

Why would the man write such stuff?

And think it poetry? Then I got it.

They aren’t so much poems as suicide notes,

All three hundred and eighty-five of them,

Him striving to get the wording right before plunging off that bridge.

“Fall is grievy, brisk,” he said,

"and empty grows every bed."†

For my part—quoting Stendhal,

alongside other obiter dicta—

I hang in here out of political curiosity:

What'll the crazy dickheads do next this fall?

Whether or not these lines make poetry,

You'll get no suicide notes from me!

†Berryman, Dream Songs, nos. 385 and 1.

Thanksgiving, November 28, 2024