John Berryman
John Berryman
Dan Rosenberg
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
Dan Rosenberg
Dan Rosenberg
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
John Berryman
The title refers to the top of a column (the “capital”) at Wells Cathedral, which is a famous cathedral in England. The “grapes of stone” in the last line frame this poem as ekphrastic: Henry is admiring this old sculpture and thinking through the long history of what has transpired in the world and...
During the father's walking--how he look
down by now in soft boards, Henry, pass
and what he feel or no, who know?--
as during hís broad father's, all the breaks
& ill-lucks of a thriving pioneer
back to the flying boy in mountain air,
Vermont's child to go out, and while Keats sweat'
for hopeless inextricable lust, Henry's fate,
and Ethan Allen was a calling man,
all through the blind one's dream of the start,
when Day was killing Porter and had to part
lovers for ever, fancy if you can,
while the cardinals' guile to keep Aeneas out
was failing, while in some hearts Chinese doubt
inscrutably was growing, toward its end,
and a starved lion by a watering-hole
clouded with gall, while Abelard was whole,
these grapes of stone were being proffered, friend.