Happy New Year! Here are two poems about drunkenness: F.D. Reeve’s “Alcoholic” and John Berryman’s “The Alcoholic in the 3rd Week of the 3rd Treatment.” Dark poems for a bright new year. (To preview Coldfront‘s 2009 Year in Review, click here.)

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Alcoholic

He was like the Lord drunk
at the sight of the world
and the size of his shadow
on top, like a newspaper blown
by the wind against a bush.
The green fields were his youth
where he and his mad companions
flew over the barefooted earth
in love. Compassion
for friends killed by the war
is marked as the village there
where the land pauses.
Then comes the wild forest,
the vacant cabin,
the birches decaying,
the half-rotten hemlocks,
the disasters of middle age,
a second life worse than the first,
the ever-present hint of collapse,
the great tree falling,
the world burned by sunlight
into a ball,
into cheap, green glass,
into nothing at all,
and him with no words,
no love,
drunk,
drunk at the sight of his shadow
and the spot shining there
where the light
reflects a toy marble
lying
by chance
on the kitchen floor.

                                        –F.D. Reeve

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The Alcoholic in the 3rd Week of the 3rd Treatment

He has taught the Universe to realise itself,
and that must have been; very simple.
Surely he has a recovery for me
and that must be after all my complex struggles: very simple.

I do, despite my self-doubts, day by day
grow more & more but a little confident
that I will never down a whiskey again
or gin or rum or vodka, brandy or ale.

It is, after all, very very difficult to despair
while the wonder of the sun                  this morning
as yesterday & probably tomorrow.
It all is, after all, very simple.

You just never drink again all each damned day.

                                        –John Berryman

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