To a Friend

Your head is steel cut into drooping lines That make a mask satirically meek: Your face is like a tired devil weak From drinking many vague and unsought wines. The sullen skepticism of your eyes For ever trying to transcend itself, Is often entered by a wistful elf Who sits naïvely unperturbed and wise.

And this same remnant, with its youthful wiles Held curiously apart from blasphemies, Twirls starlight shivers out upon your sneers And changes them to little, startled smiles. And all your insolence drops to its knees Before the half-won grandeur of past years.