Читать книгу Introducing Irony: A Book of Poetic Short Stories and Poems - Maxwell Bodenheim - Страница 6

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GINGERLY, the poets sit.

Gingerly, they spend

The adjectives of dribbling flatteries,

With here and there a laceration

Feeding on the poison of a smile.

In the home of the poet-host

That bears the slants of a commonplace,

Eagerly distributed—

The accepted lyrical note—

The poets sit.

The poets drink much wine

And tug a little at their garments,

Weighing the advantages of disrobing.

(It is necessary to call them “poets”

Since, according to custom,

Titles are generously given to the attempt.)

Sirona, cousin of the poet-host,

Munches at the feast of words.

She endeavors to convince herself

That her hunger has become an illusion.

The poets, capitulating to wine,

Leave their birds and twilights,

Their trees and cattle at evening,

And study Sirona’s body—

Their manacled hands still joined

By the last half-broken link.

Beneath her ill-fitting worship

Young Sirona fears

That the poets are wordy animals

Circled by brocaded corsets....

Sirona, if you stood on your head

Now, and waved the brave plan of your legs,

Undisturbed by cloth,

The poets would be convinced

That you were either insane or angling.

But an exceptional poet,

Never present at these parties,

Would compliment your vigour

And scoff at the vain deceptions of privacy.

Vulgarity, Sirona, is often a word

Invented by certain men to defend

Their disdain for other men, who chuckle

At the skulking tyrannies of fashion.

Few men, Sirona, dare to become

Completely vulgar, but many

Nibble at the fringes.