#371 Henry's Guilt

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First stanza is the kind of wheedling and complaining that is familiar enough to a reader of Dream Songs: “Sluggish, depressed, & with no mail to cheer, / he lies in Ireland’s rains bogged down, aware / of definite mental pain.” Oh, well. Gosh. Okay. I generally go for a walk, and if it’s raining, so much the better. Rain cheers me up. But this first is mainly to set up the overall rainy afternoon gloom of the scene and leads to the 2^nd. He has an interview in London approaching, with some women with whom apparently he had some flings once upon a time. They were “frolicsomes” then, but never married: “must he impute to them their spinsterhood / & further groan, as for the ones he stood / up and married fair?” Yeah, I get it. Look, the term “spinster” wasn’t good in 1967, and it’s doubly insufferable now, so this disconsolate poem is not looking very promising. Third stanza: “Connection with Henry seemed to be an acre in Hell,”…um…sure, let me vouch for that… “Doubtless a bell / ought to have been hung on Henry / to warn a-many lovely ladies off.”

Good idea. This whole thing is a doleful exercise in afternoon gloom and tragicomic depression. Eeyore the Donkey, with a rain cloud over his head

Yeah, and here's a response to that, from another lovely lady.