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Dream Song #14 by John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After
all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we
ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother
told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess
you’re bored means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no inner
resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore
me, literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as
achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And
the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a
dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away into
mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind:
me, wag.

.

Copyright © 1962 by John Berryman.
The Dream Songs, 1990, Farrar Straus Giroux.
Buy this book, dammit.

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