Mest leste ▸
Edgar Lee Masters
When my moustache curled,
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight trousers
And a diamond stud,
I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.
But when the gray hairs began to appear—
Lo! a new generation of girls
Laughed at me, not fearing me,
And I had no more exciting adventures
Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs
Of other days and other men.
And time went on until I lived at
Mayer’s restaurant,
Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,
Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan. . . .
every word broken
among the fine ladies
old coxcomb
High heels.
Portable pinnacles
to teeter on for others’ titillation,
back arched as if on the edge
of orgasm or some lovers’ leap.
The spine loses its spring
& the feet their feeling.
Toes in a too-small toebox
jostle & twist like
a litter of kittens
tied up in a sack.
Some people admire my signature.
I too do.
The sweeping strokes
The V like the prow of a racing snake boat
The aerodynamic slant to the right –
It looks like a Roman galleon
About to ram into the midriff of an enemy ship.
I love to scribble my signature.
In bits of paper, in office vouchers
In letters to the editor and beg to submits.
Every signature reflects my mood –
Angry, tense, happy, sleepy, sad, content
Confident, shaky, casual, sharp -
The swirls and whorls, the strokes and strikes
Wax and wane in the tides of my mind.
Every signature screams - look at me, look at me
The sloping lines of your shoulders
Speak of Chinese pagodas.
They clash with your western face
Where child and courtesan
Clasp each other in a feigned embrace.
Life, to you, is a liquid mirror.
You stand with delicate, perpetual amazement,
Vainly seeking your reflection.
Let down your braids of hair, lady.
Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass
And gaze long on lines under your eyes.
Life writes; men dance.
And you know how men pay women.
After you have spent all the money modistes and
manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you
over into a thing the people on the streets call
proud and beautiful,
After the shops and fingers have worn out all they
have and know and can hope to have and know
for the sake of making you what the people on
the streets call proud and beautiful,
After there is absolutely nothing more to be done for
the sake of staging you as a great enigmatic bird
of paradise and they must all declare you to be
proud and beautiful,
After you have become the last word in good looks,
insofar as good looks may be fixed and formulated,
then, why then, there is nothing more to
it then, it is then you listen and see how voices
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend
Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,
And being frank she lends to those are free:
Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse
The bounteous largess given thee to give?
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?
For having traffic with thy self alone,
Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,
What acceptable audit canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,
Which, used, lives th' executor to be.
Upon the road of my life,
Passed me many fair creatures,
Clothed all in white, and radiant.
To one, finally, I made speech:
"Who art thou?"
But she, like the others,
Kept cowled her face,
And answered in haste, anxiously,
"I am good deed, forsooth;
You have often seen me."
"Not uncowled," I made reply.
And with rash and strong hand,
Though she resisted,
I drew away the veil
And gazed at the features of vanity.
She, shamefaced, went on;