Dream Song 104: Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!

Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!

I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done.

The hospitals were fun

in certain ways, and an honour or so,

but on the whole fifty was a mess as though

heavy clubs from below

and from—God save the bloody mark—above

were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love,

what was you loafing of

that fifty put you off, out & away,

leaving the pounding, horrid sleep by day,

nights naught but fits. I pray

the opening decade contravene its promise

to be as bad as all the others. Is

there something Henry miss

in the jungle of the gods whom Henry's prayer to?

Empty temples—a decade of dark-blue

sins, son, worse than you.