Light On Dark Water

This is #7 from John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs. Berryman was born in 1914, and is here remembering movies of roughly the late '20s. If these references were replaced with ones from the late '50s these lines would do very well as a description of a state of mind very familiar to me and, I dare say, with some adjustments to the movie titles, to most adults, especially those of a certain age. "Henry" is Berryman's way of referring to himself (more or less).

Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers
Mr. Deeds' tuba, & the Cameo,
& the race in Ben Hur, —The Lost World, with sound,
& The Man from Blankley's, which he did not dig,
nor did he understand one caption of,
bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed.

Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One.
Fúnnee; he don't féel so.
He just stuck around.

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