Ted Berrigan

[The Jim Carroll Website]

from Ted Berrigan's Sonnets:

XXXVIII

Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons

For you I starred in the movie

Made on the site

Of Benedict Arnold’s triumph, Ticonderoga, and

I shall increase from this

As I am a cowboy and you imaginary

Ripeness begins corrupting every tree

Each strong morning          A man signs a shovel

And so he digs        It hurts          and so

We get our feet wet in air           we love our lineage

Ourselves        Music, salve, pills, kleenex, lunch

And the promise never to truckle         A man

Breaks his arm and so he sleeps      he digs

In sleep half silence and with reason

[do you hear Heaney? who wrote which poem first? did either know the other?]