"and there is a glowing orb emanating from your little heart"

I am simply loving Berryman's collection, The Dispossessed. I cannot stop reading it ... after reading and rereading The Dream Songs for so many years, it is nice to find that "new." I am sure I had read this collection at some point in my hours of reading Berryman, but it seems so new and absolutely beautiful. I am constantly transfixed. He frees me. "The Spinning Heart" and "The Ball Poem" are joyous musings on love and loss and the often jaggedly difficult unavoidables of the human spirit and condition.

And I also feel real again. I had a good visit with myself last night while listening to Lucinda Williams' new record, West. The lyrics as well as the music is truly superb. And I feel again a freedom in being happy. Someone makes me so happy so often and constantly now: the day before yesterday, yesterday, and today and every moment. And I am not talking about Berryman ... but a real, living breathing person who may be in possession of Berryman's very soul. I said to him: and there is a glowing orb emanating from your little heart. A knowing smirk endearingly followed.

But I digress. And I am finding it tough these last couple of days to wipe the knowing smirk off of my face ...

And for all of those knowing smirks everywhere, here's a little J.B.:

The Traveller
by John Berryman (from The Dispossessed)

They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
"That man has a curious way of holding his head."

They pointed me out on the beach; they said "That man
will never become as we are, try as he can."

They pointed me out at the station, and the guard
looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.

I took the same train that the others took,
to the same place. Were it not for that look
and those words, we were all of us the same.
I studied merely maps. I tried to name
the effects of motion on the travellers,
I watched the couple I could see, the curse
and blessings of that couple, their destination,
the deception practised on them at the station,
their courage. When the train stopped and they knew
the end of their journey, I descended too.