1
Your smiles, ah! Your smiles come easy,
But are no cheaper for their frequent gift.
You grin is natural, sudden, breezy.
Up wingèd thoughts your features lift.
Subrīdēs, ita verō, etiam nōn sub rosā.
When chance to gleeful beams gives birth,
No solemn god can mute your mirth.
Harpocrites, the silent youth
Can’t frown your mouth or stop a tooth.
Saint Arnold’s mug will overflow
Yet never drain its wholesome beer.
When all could take of it and drink,
Why hide or hoard that wondrous cup?
So too your grace and gladness grow,
Fill up your face, and flood the room with cheer!
I float upon your wellspring joy and cannot sink.
Twould be a sin to staunch what bubbles up.
2
Perhaps I lie and call it true,
But the due grace I gave seems
Now like drunken wishes. I was drunk on you.
No touch, but sight and scent and sound,
All simple senses, and yet profound,
Were made an idol, ideal, perfection—
And yet once more I’ve lost direction!
Is this erotic? Pathetic? Pedantic?
It’s all too romantic, Romantic,
Rome—antic! Manic!
Trapped in antique misabstractions,
Of Fantasy, chivalry, courtship…
If I am drunk on love and love of love,
Have I lost the truth of me and you?
But then again the cues, the clues
Do not accuse my love of wrong.
I’ve tasted sweetened sips of smiles;
Your grin beguiles, an opened rose,
No need to wish nor want nor pine.
You sees me here, no lonely knight,
But a fellow, peer, a human, alike:
I feel as if you’re not “a girl,”
And I’m no longer just a boy—
I’m a Man. You’re the Woman, not coy.
3
To pen a flow’ry verse for a flow’ry shape:
Too obvious? Plain? Vulgar? Lewd?
Some Sigmund fraud might twist what’s meant
In devoted, meticulous turns of phrase
For the joyous play of a woman’s lips.
But I am not a slouching ape!
Incarnate truths, though carnal, are not rude!
While flesh will baser thoughts and deeds present,
Such earthly things do not lower a poet’s gaze.
Encountered Beauty serves sacred scripts.
So here I am, like Prufrock, trying to prove,
Exposit desperately, examine despairingly,
Something honest and plain, pretty and true,
—I’ve lost the path, the track and groove!—
To everybody and nobody—to me and you.
4
Kill the time, the rushing clock of doom!
My eyes alight upon your eyes;
They lighten up a darkened room.
Cliched, I know; once more we go, with sighs:
You brighten even an empty tomb.
One final rhyme, and then it’s done:
I have to choose, to choose someone.
There’s no more import I can glean,
And a measly rhyme won’t end this rant,
But let it be what it may be.
I’ve made my choice; I won’t recant.
What does this smile of yours now mean?
I’ve chosen you. Will you choose me?
