A young woman who has been renounced by her lover, because of her lack of culture, answers his derision.
YOUR cloistered naughtiness
Makes me as boisterous
As a savage attending
A minstrel-show of regrets.
The pampered carefulness
With which you distil a series
Of standardized perfumes from life
Takes its promenade
Between the realms of sanity and madness.
You are too precise to be quite sane
And too evasive to be insane,
And all that you have left me
Is a mood of windy sadness—
Emotions becoming verbose
In a last thin effort
To persuade themselves that they loved
A jewel that slipped from your fingers.
Your mind is a limpid warehouse
Filled with other mens’ creations,
And you pilfer a bit from each,
Disguising the scheme of your culture.
I would rather be a naked fool
Than a full-gowned erudite
Imitation of other mens’ hands.
I shall marry a desperado
And give him strength with which to paint
Black angels and muscular contortions
On panels of taffeta.