19 AUGUST 1972, Page 11

i.m. John Berryman

Blind harper, blind fiddler, blind poet; • old hold-ails stuffed with rags and ragged dreams, petty session held in ditch and shebeen.

The wise threw bright sails to the wind and dropped dead in their dreams between candle and quill, rats at them.

II Like truth, over the horizons they stumble now like mammoths come back, all our confused galleons staggering in tempest, collapsing under the weight of their priceless cargoes; on the rocks they flounder toward, the girls glitter the gifts of their bodies opening like wounds, while again on a far horizon the dawn sails by like a world that works, brown men singing in its rigging, a golden fleet forever sailing the wrong way.

Richard Ryan