Chapter I: To an Actor

You are a gilded card-case
Which I took for a purse.
Your spirit's coin was squandered long ago,
And in its place
Are white cards, all alike,
Bearing a word,
A name,
Connoting nothing.

2. PHILOSOPHER TO ARTIST

You are a raisin, but I am a nut!
What meat there is to you
Can be seen at a glance--
(Seeds, when they exist, are bitter)
My calm, round glossiness,
(For I am sound and free
From wormy restlessness of spirit)
Defies your casual inspection.

It takes sharp teeth
And some determination
To taste my kernel!

A Womanly Woman

You sit, a snug, warm kitten
Blinking through the window
At a storm-haunted world--

Sleet wind caterwauls
Through icy trees,
Which clack their hands at you
Tauntingly.

Why should you leave
Radiator and rubber-plant?
Do people stand at attention to mourn a hero
When they behold
A frozen kitten
In a gutter?

Lolita Now Is Old

Lolita now is old,
She sits in the park, watching the young men pass
And huddles her shawl against the cold.

One night last summer when the moon was red,
Lolita, hearing an old song sung
And amorous laughter down the street
Left her bed--
Lolita thought she was young.

With ancient finery on her back,
A lace mantilla hiding her grey head,
She crept into the warm and alien night.

Her trembling knees remembered the languid pace
Of beauty on adventure bent--her fan
Waved challenges with unforgotten grace.
Cunningly she played her part
For to her peering age
Love was a well-remembered art.

Footsteps followed her--footsteps drew near!
She dropped a rose--hush, he is here!
There came hard arms and a panting kiss--

He felt the fraud of those withered lips,
He cursed and spat--"Was it for this,
You came, old woman, to the park?"
Lolita gathered skirts and fled
Through the dim dark.

Lolita huddles her shawl against the cold,
She sits and mumbles by the fire. In truth
Lolita knows she is old.

The Shining Bird

A bird is three things:
Feathers, flight and song,
And feathers are the least of these.

At last I hold her in my hands
The shining bird whose flight along
The perilous rim of trees
Has made my days adventurous, my spirit strong.

And now her wings
Are still--her vivid song
But ceaseless twitterings.

Her words are feathers, falling
Lightly, relentlessly, and without rest,
Revealing to my face
Her pinched and starveling breast
Like poultry, dead and unashamed
And naked in the market place.

A shattered flash of wings,
A broken song,
Echo and shine along the rim of trees.

The King Sends Three Cats to Guinevere

Queen Guinevere,
Three sleek and silent cats
Bring you gifts from me.

The first is a grey one,
(I wanted a white one,
I could not find one snowy white enough,
Queen Guinevere,)
He brings you purple grapes.

The second is a grey one,
(I wanted a sleek one,
Where could I find one sleek enough,
Queen Guinevere?)
He brings you a red apple.

The third one, too, is grey.
(I wanted a black one,
Not Hate itself could find one black enough,
Queen Guinevere,)
He brings you poison toadstools.

I send you three grey cats with gifts--
(For uniformity of metaphor,
Since Bacchus, Satan, and the Hangman
Are not contemporaneous in my mythology)
I send you three grey cats with gifts,
Queen Guinevere,
To warn you, sleekly, silently
To pay the forfeit.

Ode in the New Mode

Your face
Was a temple
From which your soul
Came to me beneath arched brows:
And my soul knelt at your feet.

Then
Inadvertently
I saw your leg
Curved and turned like a bird-song
Dying into ecstatic silence at the garter...

Wretched
Women!
When you are wholly lovely
Man cannot forget either of his two afflictions,
Soul, or body!

Night

I opened the door
And night stared at me like a fool,
Heavy dull night, clouded and safe--
I turned again toward the uncertainties
Of life within doors.

Once night was a lion,
No, years ago, night was a python
Weaving designs against space
With undulations of his being--
Night was a siren once.

O sodden, middle-aged night!

End of Project Gutenberg's A Woman of Thirty, by Marjorie Allen Seiffert