THE NEW ART
(With apologies to Rossetti)
BY CORINNE ROCKWELL SWAIN
THE cubist damosel leaned out
From a neurotic heaven;
Her face was stranger than the dreams
Of topers filled at even:
She had four facets to her nose,
And the eyes in her head were seven.
Her robe, concrete from clasp to hem,
Six angles did adorn,
With a white parallelogram
For trimming neatly worn:
Her hair rose up in pentagons,
Like yellow ears of corn.
It was a post-impression house
That she was standing on;
While maudlin quadrilateral clouds
O’er mystic gardens spun,
And three denatured greyhounds ran
Circlewise round the sun.
“I wish that they could draw,” she moaned,
“Nor throw such fits as this;
Souza-Cardosa, and the five
Who love weird symphonies:
Fiebig, Picabia, Picasso,
D’Erlanger, and Matisse.”
She smiled, though her amorphous mouth
Was vague beyond her ears;
Then cast her beveled arms along
The rhomboid barriers,
And shedding asymmetric plinths,
She wept. (I heard her tears.)