Dream Song 1: Huffy Henry hid the day

Huffy Henry

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point, – a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry’s side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don’t see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.

from Collected Poems: 1937-1971 (Faber, 1990), copyright © 1989 by Kate Donahue Berryman, by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. Recording used by permission of the BBC.

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