Candidia has taken a new lover
And three poets are gone into mourning.
The first has written a long elegy to “Chloris,”
To “Chloris chaste and cold,” his “only Chloris.”
The second has written a sonnet
upon the mutability of woman,
And the third writes an epigram to Candidia.
The Gipsy
“Est-ce que vous avez vu des autres—des camarades—avec des singes ou des ours?”
A Stray Gipsy—A.D. 1912.
That was the top of the walk, when he said:
“Have you seen any others, any of our lot,
With apes or bears?”
—A brown upstanding fellow
Not like the half-castes,
up on the wet road near Clermont.
The wind came, and the rain,
And mist clotted about the trees in the valley,
And I’d the long ways behind me,
gray Arles and Biaucaire,
And he said, “Have you seen any of our lot?”
I’d seen a lot of his lot ...
ever since Rhodez,
Coming down from the fair
of St. John,
With caravans, but never an ape or a bear.
The Game of Chess
Dogmatic Statement Concerning the Game of Chess:
Theme for a Series of Pictures
Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens,
striking the board, falling in strong “L”s of colour,
Reaching and striking in angles,
holding lines in one colour.
This board is alive with light;
these pieces are living in form,
Their moves break and reform the pattern:
Luminous green from the rooks,
Clashing with “X”s of queens,
looped with the knight-leaps.