Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one! <br />I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done. <br />The hospitals were fun <br />in certain ways, and an honour or so, <br />but on the whole fifty was a mess as though <br />heavy clubs from below <br /> <br />and from—God save the bloody mark—above <br />were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love, <br />what was you loafing of <br />that fifty put you off, out & away, <br />leaving the pounding, horrid sleep by day, <br />nights naught but fits. I pray <br /> <br />the opening decade contravene its promise <br />to be as bad as all the others. Is <br />there something Henry miss <br />in the jungle of the gods whom Henry's prayer to? <br />Empty temples—a decade of dark-blue <br />sins, son, worse than you.<br /><br />John Berryman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dream-song-104-welcome-grinned-henry-welcome-fif/
