JOHN HAFFENDEN
mus and palpable liver, bruises on both shins and inabililYlO walk
or stand.
569
This was to be the last time tha t Dr. Mayberg treated Berryman , whom
he described
to
me as an "exquisitely sensitive man. " The treatment
was no more than "a holding action ." Dr. Mayberg's fun ction , as he
put it, was "onl y to maintain him alive, fun ctioning, an'd productive."
Berryman was back in the hosp ital aga in for three days from March
17th : diagnosis , the same. There, he discovered,
It 's all girls lhis lime. The elderly, the men,
of my former slays have given way
LO
girls,
fourteen
LO
forty, raucous, racing the hall s,
cursing lheir paramours
&
angry husbands.
Nighls of wilches: I dreaml a headl ess child.
Sobbings, a scream, a slam.
Will day glow again to lhese lossers, and
LO
me?
I am slay ing days.
At 7 o'clock in the morning after his admi ssion , he wro te a poem
about ano ther patient, T yson , who had arrived in the hospital with the
words, " I have come to announce my death. " The poem, "Dea th
Ballad" expresses painful witness to the spectacle of Tyson and Jo,
who were "United in their feel o f worthlessness /
&
rage," and ends
wi th the sympa thetic considera tion that one way to save oneself is to
care for o thers, as Berryman himself was doing:
lake up, outside your blocked selves, some sma ll lhing
lhal is moving
&
wants lOkeep on moving
&
needs therefore, Tyson, Jo, your loving.
Anything ugly or painful was a source of excessive hurt and
suffering to Berryman. H e was both sensitive to suffering and sensitized
by it. As Dr. Mayberg observed, h e would weep "copiously for the trials
and tribulations of those with whom he came in contact."
In
addition,
he would extract suffering from others in order to augment his own
suffering.
It
was Dr. Mayberg's opinion that separations from loved
objects were the key to his constant and chronic depression: one such
separation is commemorated at about thi s time in the poem " Heaven ,"
which concerns a woman who, as a draft of the poem reads, "was kill ed
in a car incident soon after she married." The same draft includes the
