English

Englished.

Fabullus I will treat you handsomely
Shortly, if the kind gods will favour thee.
If thou dost bring with thee a del'cate messe,
An Olio or so, a pretty Lass,
Brisk wine, sharp tales, all sorts of Drollery,
These if thou bringst (I say) along with thee
You shall feed highly friend, for know the ebbs
Of my lank purse are full of Spiders webs,
But then again you shall recieve clear love
Or what more grateful or more sweet may prove,
For with an ointment I will favour thee,
My Venus 's and Cupids gave to me,

OLD ACTOR

Any minor poet can claim
That his subject resembles music.
( " Her steps were notes of music. "
" His presence was like a song. " )
You are a long-neglected
Instrument from which the player,
With over-confident lips, blows only
A jet of dust that falls upon
The damp chagrin of his face.
Moist from the futile effort
He asks his listeners to admire
Imaginary notes.
They clap their hands, and he must retire
To the slow digesting of his lie.
Old actor, you have finished reciting Hamlet;

WOMAN

They worship musical sound
Protecting the breast of emotion.
Their feelings pose as fortune-tellers
And angle for coins from credulous thoughts.
Shall we abandon this luxury
Of mild mist and wild raptures?
Your face refrains from saying yes
But your closed eyes roundly
Reward the luminous sentence.
Greece and Asia have exchanged
Problems upon your face,
And the fine poise of your head
Tries to catch their conversation.
Few people care to use
Thought as a musical instrument

MANICURIST

Maudlin, hurt, morose,
Tender, angry, remote,
Whimsical, frigid, impatient —
Compel these adjectives to become
Friendly to each other
And let them stumble in unison
Beneath the muscular trouble of life.
The careful Boss who sends them on
Holds one eye of bitterness
And another of sentimentality,
Closing each one on different occasions.
The careful Boss may be your soul,
Tired manicurist, amazing
The fragrant barber-shop
With words of valiant prose.

SHOP-GIRL

Yellow roses in your black hair
Hold the significance
Of stifled mystics defying Time.
Yellow roses in your black hair
Can become to certain eyes
The trivial details of emotion.
Yellow roses in your black hair
Often embarrass young philosophers
Who suddenly realize
That they have been furtively snatching at color and light.

Shop-girl, in the midst of your frolic,
Take this portrait without surprise.
Portraits are merely pretexts.

WAITRESS

Musicians and carpenters
Meet upon your trays of food:
Aesthetics and the flesh
Play their little joke upon dogma,
Urged by the rhythm of your hands.
Your rouged cheeks slip unnoticed
Through the sexless turmoil.
The rituals are hastened
Lest they become self-conscious ...
I stop you and remark:
" The sylvan story of your hair
Is damaged by your rhinestone comb.
May I remove it? " Then you stare.
The fact that you have been
Greeted by something other than a wink

STENOGRAPHER

Intellect,
You are an electrical conspiracy
Between the advance guards of soul and mind.
Thoughts and spiritual instincts,
Profound and unfanatical,
Sit plotting against the enmity
That seeks to wall them in separate castles ...
A thought and a spiritual instinct
Link themselves for an instant
Upon the face of this stenographer.
Unknown to her mind and speech
A gleam of intellect contradicts her features,
And she spies the jest of her relation
To the droning man beside her.

OLD MAN

Below your skull a social gathering glows.
Weak animosities exchange a last
Chat with emotional ambassadors
Who honor the importance of your past.
You turn your hammock and surrender limbs
To sunlight, and increase the hammock's swing
As though you suavely bargained with a friend.
Its answers are impersonal and bring
A tolerance that wounds your lack of strength.
A final insurrection cleaves your rest.
You raise your back, then lower it, convinced
That motion now would be a needless test . . . .

CHILD

Like puffs of smoke inquisitively blown
Across the slight transparency of dawn,
The births of thought disperse upon your face.
A tenuous arrogance, when they have gone,
Clings to its tiny wisdom and denies
The feeble challenge. Warm emotions swarm
Upon the flushed impatience of your face
And merge to lordly, evanescent form.
New sights bring light oppression to your mind.
You struggle with a hunger that transcends
The gleaming indecisions of your eyes
And wins a flitting certainty. Your trends

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