COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUE |
W e judge by appearance merely: If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly. So I grew the hair so long on my head That my mother wouldn't know me, Till a woman in a night-club said, As I was passing by, "Hullo, here comes Salome ..." I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass, And, oh Salome; there I was— Positively jewelled, half a vampire, With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire Over the brink of the crag of sense, Looking down from perilous eminence Into a gulf of windy night. And there's straw in my tempestuous hair, And I'm not a poet: but never despair! I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.
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