Читать книгу The Village on Horseback - Jesse Ball - Страница 45

So many people had come by asking for water that day

that I took the last one with me to the well.

We both climbed in. It is, you know, one of my favorite places.

At the bottom, I have set up a fine little room

with soft cushions and a phonograph.

“What would you like to hear,” I ask her.

She says, “Mozart, I guess,” and darts

her little tongue at me, coyly disengages a dress strap.

“Oh you deipnosophists are all alike!” I shout,

and put on Brahms to spite her.

In response, she wags her tail. It is long and soft,

most alluring. Alluring, one might say,

if one lived in a house in the desert.

Who knew, I ask you, who knew when I was a child

that I would one day be made a present

of such a lovely girl as this?