An intimate and playful accident

Common to life had placed him on a bench

Beside an old and stiffly wounded wench.

With erudite and careful eyes he sent

A sneer to tear away her feeble mask

And snatch the battered dullness of her heart.

He spied her only in the scheming part

Of soiled flesh bickering with some trivial task.

The lacerated madness of her soul,

And delicate emotions kicked by life,

Did not invade the swift tricks of his mind.

Regarding her, he could not see the whole,

Or catch the psychic lunge behind her strife.

His eyes were savagely adroit, and blind.