A Professor's Song
By John Berryman
(. . .rabid or dog-dull.) Let me
tell you how
The Eighteenth Century couplet
ended. Now
Tell me. Troll me the sources of
that Song---
Assigned last week---by Blake.
Come, come along,
Gentleman. (Fidget and huddle,
do. Squint soon.)
I want to end these fellows all
by noon.
'That deep romantic chasm'---an
early use;
The word is from the French, by
our abuse
Fished out a bit. (Red all your
eyes. O when?)
'A poet is a man speaking to
men':
But I am then a poet, am I
not?---
Ha ha. The radiator, please.
Well, what?
Alive now---no---Blake would have
written prose,
But movement following movement
crisply flows,
So much the better, better the
much so,
As burbleth Mozart. Twelve. The
class can go.
Until I meet you, then, in Upper
Hell
Convulsed, foaming immortal
blood: farewell.
