The Sonnets: XLI

By Ted Berrigan 1934–1983 Ted Berrigan

banging around in a cigarette she isn’t “in love”

my dream a drink with Ira Hayes we discuss the code of the west

my hands make love to my body when my arms are around you

you never tell me your name

and I am forced to write “belly” when I mean “love”

Au revoir, scene!

I waken, read, write long letters and

wander restlessly when leaves are blowing

my dream a crumpled horn

in advance of the broken arm

she murmurs of signs to her fingers

weeps in the morning to waken so shackled with love

Not me. I like to beat people up.

My dream a white tree

Ted Berrigan, “Sonnet XLI” from The Sonnets. Copyright © 2000 by Alice Notley, Literary Executrix of the Estate of Ted Berrigan. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

Source: The Sonnets (Penguin Books, 2000)

Biography

Ted Berrigan—Edmund Joseph Michael Berrigan Jr.—was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the oldest of three children of Margaret Dugan and Edmund Berrigan, the chief engineer at Ward's Baking Company. On both sides the family was Irish Catholic. Berrigan attended local schools and entered Providence College, a local Catholic school, but left after a year and enlisted in the army.

Berrigan was sent to Korea in 1954 but never saw . . .

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