Tennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!
She may not be a beauty, but she's cute.»
It was no use, no use. The prizes won
In French and history, no doubt, were fun;
At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,
And one shy little guest might be left out;
But let's be fair: while children of her age
[310]
Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage
That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,
My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,
A bent charwoman with a slop pail and broom,
And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room.
Another winter was scrape-scooped away.
The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May.
Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.
Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned
Into a wood duck. And again your voice:
[320]
«But this is prejudice! You should rejoice
That she is innocent. Why overstress
The physical? She wants to look a mess.
Virgins have written some resplendent books.
Lovemaking is not everything. Good looks
Are not that indispensable!» And still
Old Pan would call from every painted hill,
And still the demons of our pity spoke:
No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke;
The telephone that rang before a ball
[330]
Every two minutes in Sorosa Hall
For her would never ring; and, with a great
Screeching of tires on gravel, to the gate
Out of lacquered night, a white-scarfed beau
Would never come for her; she'd never go,
A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance.
We sent her, though, to a château in France.
And she returned in tears, with new defeats,
New miseries. On days when all the streets
Of College Town led to the game, she'd sit
[340]
On the library steps, and read or knit;
Mostly alone she'd be, or with that nice
Frail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice,
With a Korean boy who took my course.
She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force
Of character — as when she spent three nights
Investigating certain sounds and lights
In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,
Spider, redips. And «powder» was «red wop.»
She called you a didactic katydid.
[350]
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize
Ferociously our projects, and with eyes
Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed
Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head
With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,
Murmuring dreadful words in monotone.
She was my darling: difficult, morose —
But still my darling. You remember those
Almost unruffled evenings when we played
[360]
Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which made
Her almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled,
The lights were merciful, the shadows mild.
Sometimes I'd help her with a Latin text,
Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, next
To my fluorescent lair, and you would be
In your own study, twice removed from me,
And I would hear both voices now and then:
«Mother, what's grimpen?» «What is what?»
«Grim Pen.»
Pause, and your guarded scholium. Then again:
[370]
«Mother, what's chtonic?» That, too, you'd explain,
Appending: «Would you like a tangerine?»
«No. Yes. And what does sempiternal mean?»
You'd hesitate. And lustily I'd roar
The answer from my desk through the closed door.
It does not matter what it was she read
(some phony modern poem that was said
In English Lit to be a document
«Engazhay and compelling» — what this meant
Nobody cared); the point is that the three
[380]
Chambers, then bound by you and her and me,
Now form a tryptich or a three-act play
In which portrayed events forever stay.
I think she always nursed a small mad hope.
I'd finished recently my book on Pope.
Jane Dean, my typist, offered her one day
To meet Pete Dean, a cousin. Jane's fiancé
Would then take all of them in his new car
A score of miles to a Hawaiian bar.
The boy was picked up at a quarter past
[390]
Eight in New Wye. Sleet glazed the roads. At last
They found the place — when suddenly Pete Dean
Clutching his brow exclaimed that he had clean
Forgotten an appointment with a chum
Who'd land in jail if he, Pete, did not come,
Et cetera. She said she understood.
After he'd gone the three young people stood
Before the azure entrance for awhile.
Puddles were neon-barred; and with a smile
She said she'd be de trop, she'd much prefer
[400]
Just going home. Her friends escorted her
To the bus stop and left; but she, instead
Of riding home, got off at Lochanhead.
You scrutinized your wrist: «It's eight fifteen.
[And here time forked.] I'll turn it on.» The screen
In its blank broth evolved a lifelike blur,
And music welled.
He took one look at her,
And shot a death ray at well-meaning Jane.
A male hand traced from Florida to Maine
