UNLITERARY AND SHAMELESS
Reading edition
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.