Chapter I: Poet

You have escaped the comedy
Of swift, pretentious praise and blame,
And smashed a tavern where they sell
The harlots’ wine that men call fame.
Heralds of reckless solitude
Have offered you another voice,
But men are still a tempting jest.
You roam and cannot make a choice.
When you have played distractedly
With a humility, you tire
And change the pastime to a pride.
These are but moods of one desire.
You throw an imitating gleam
Upon the dwarfs that line your road,
Then with a worn hostility
You tramp along beneath your load.

II

WOMAN

To hide your isolation, you become
Tame and loquacious, bowing to the men
Who bring you ornaments and poverties.
Your cryptic melancholy dwindles then,
Solved by the distant contrast of your words.
Your loneliness, with an amused relief,
Sits listening to your volubility
And idling with an enervated grief.
The play does not begin until you say
Your last “good-night,” for you have only made
A swindled fantasy regain its parts.
Throughout the night you held an unseen blade
Upon your lap and trifled with its hilt,
And now you lift it with submissive dread.
Should you attack your loneliness and grief
Now that they are asleep? You shake your head.