I
A chorus-girl falls asleep and, in a dream, speaks to a former lover. In her dream she holds the intelligence of a poet but still clings to certain of the qualities and mannerisms of her wakeful self.
SAY, kid, I’m in a candid mood;
The kind of mood that silences
The babbling dampness of my character.
I’m feeling as improbable
As an overworked Grecian myth
Fainting amid the smells of a Ghetto.
Now, Hypocrisy
Always slinks along
Winking an opaque eye at reality.
But when he spies a fantasy
He feels disgraced and leaves in haste.
What’s the use of telling a lie to a lie?
So, since I’m only a dream,
Listen to my candid scream.
You like to press a rouged cheek
Against your obscurity,
Like a third-rate poet
Pasting a sunset upon his emptiness.
Bashful mountebanks like you
Can seduce the eloquent delusion
Of time and give it a speechless limp.
The insincere trickle of your words
Was neither silence nor sound
But falteringly tempted both,
Like a tiny fountain unnoticed
At the feet of two large coquettes
The intricate laziness
Of your dimpled face
Received a petulantly naked
Ghost of thought, and seized it without desire.
Again it held the furbished effigies
Of sensuality
And tried to give them life
From the weariness of my face.
Yet I could have endured you
But for the fact that your moustache
Scraped across my lips
Like a clumsy imitation of passion.
Trivial insults have tumbled down
The pillared complacency of empires
Just as the thrust of your lips
Tripped my mercenary balance.
My lover now has the face of a dog,
With each corner of his lips
Pointing to a different Heaven,
Yet his greed and melancholy
Sometimes fondle each other
Upon the pressures of his mouth,
And the monotony of his kiss
Does not dissolve my stoicism.
Women who measure their gifts for lovers
Never hope for more than this.