OLD MAID’S REVERIE
I’m tired of mirthless mirrors and their hostile heresies,
Of musing in a mansion hung with mildewed memories;
Of the silence of the stairways, of the statuary wan,
Of the alabaster angel riding on the fountain swan;
I’m irked by isolation and the lawns kept so and so—
I’d trade an old maid’s theories for a rood of Soap Suds Row;
For the sunflowers and the shanties where the shadows sit at ease,
For the horde of baby banshees and the swing-scarred apple-trees;
Therefore methinks I’ll venture to a disarrayed domain,
And shoonless dance the saraband in some assuaging lane.
No sandals wrought in Sybaris, or girdle bossed with gold,
But beauty in a barefoot mood, revising edicts old.
There cupids turn the calendars to Michael Angelo,
The goya needs no gabardine, the rose no kimono;
And me, a maiden mendicant may ask an alms, forsooth,
As one who missed the rubrics in the litanies of youth.