Gaping tatters in each garment prove
your calling is not only beggary
but beauty as well,
and to a poet equally ‘reduced,’
the frail and freckled body you display
makes its own appeal—
queens in velvet buskins take the stage
less regally than you wade through the mud
on your wooden clogs.
What if, instead of these indecent rags,
the splendid train of a brocaded gown
rustled at your heels,
and rather than torn stockings, just suppose
curious glances sliding up your thigh
met with a gold dirk!
And then if, for our sins, those flimsy knots
released two perfect little breasts that shine
brighter than your eyes,
and your own arms consented to reveal
the rest, though archly feigning to fend off
hands that go too far . . .
Strands of pearls and strophes by Belleau
arriving in—imagine!—endless streams
‘from an admirer’;
riffraff—talented and otherwise—
offering tributes to the slippered feet
glimpsed from below stairs;
gentlemen sending flunkeys to find out
who owns the carriage always told to ‘wait’
at your smart address
where, in the boudoir, kisses count for more
than quarterings, although the cast includes
a Bourbon or two!
--Meanwhile, here you are, begging scraps
doled out by the local table dhôte
at the kitchen door
and scavenging discarded finery
worth forty sous, a price which (pardon me!)
I cannot afford . . .
Go, then, my Beauty, with no ornament
--patchouli or pearl choker—but your own
starveling nakedness!
your calling is not only beggary
but beauty as well,
and to a poet equally ‘reduced,’
the frail and freckled body you display
makes its own appeal—
queens in velvet buskins take the stage
less regally than you wade through the mud
on your wooden clogs.
What if, instead of these indecent rags,
the splendid train of a brocaded gown
rustled at your heels,
and rather than torn stockings, just suppose
curious glances sliding up your thigh
met with a gold dirk!
And then if, for our sins, those flimsy knots
released two perfect little breasts that shine
brighter than your eyes,
and your own arms consented to reveal
the rest, though archly feigning to fend off
hands that go too far . . .
Strands of pearls and strophes by Belleau
arriving in—imagine!—endless streams
‘from an admirer’;
riffraff—talented and otherwise—
offering tributes to the slippered feet
glimpsed from below stairs;
gentlemen sending flunkeys to find out
who owns the carriage always told to ‘wait’
at your smart address
where, in the boudoir, kisses count for more
than quarterings, although the cast includes
a Bourbon or two!
--Meanwhile, here you are, begging scraps
doled out by the local table dhôte
at the kitchen door
and scavenging discarded finery
worth forty sous, a price which (pardon me!)
I cannot afford . . .
Go, then, my Beauty, with no ornament
--patchouli or pearl choker—but your own
starveling nakedness!
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