No screwballs like him
Print of the McLean Asylum (founded in 1811) in 1853, in Somerville, Mass. The hospital was moved to Belmont in 1895.
“In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)''—From “Waking in the Blue,’’ by American poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977). The poem is based on his stay in McLean Hospital, a psychiatric institution in Belmont, Mass., that became famous, for among other things, a place for very discreetly treating celebrities such as Lowell. A descendent of Mayflower passenger James Chilton, he suffered from bi-polar disorder.