I wondered ever too what my fate would be

John Berryman: The Search

I wondered ever too what my fate would be,
woman & after-fame become quite unavailable,
or at best unimportant. For a tooth-extraction
gassed once, by a Russian woman in Detroit,

I dreamed a dream to end dreams, even my dreams:
I had died – no problem: but a mighty hand
was after my works, too, feeling here & there,
& finding them, bit by bit.
At last he found the final of all one, & pulled it away, & said ‘There!’

I began the historical study of the Gospel
indebted above all to Guignebert
& Goguel & McNeile
& Bultmann even & later Archbishop Carrington.

The Miracles were a stumbling block;
until I read Karl Heim, trained in natural science;
until I had sufficiently attended to
The Transfiguration & The Ecstasy.

I was weak on the Fourth Gospel. I still am,
in places; I plan to amend that.
Wellisch on Isaac & Oedipus
supplements for me Kierkegaard.

Luther on Galatians (his grand joy)
I laid aside until I was older & wiser.
Bishop Andrewes’ account of the Resurrection-appearances
in 1609 seemed to me, seems to me, it.

I studied Titian’s remarks on The Tribute-Money.
Bishop Westcott’s analysis (it took him 25 years)
of the first eighteen verses of St. John
struck me as of a cunning like Odysseus’.

And other systems, high and primitive,
ancient & surviving, did I not neglect,
sky-gods & trickster-gods, gods impotent,
the malice & force of the dead.

When at twelve Einstein lost belief in God
he said to himself at once (as he put it later)
‘Similarly motivated men, both of the past & of the present,
together with their achieved insights,
waren die unverlierbaren Freunde’ – the unloseable friends.