Classic Poem

Boccaccio once pilfered
Your wilting corsage of white violets —
Needing a touch of shyness
To neutralize his ribaldry?
Tell him that indecency
Is always faint-hearted at bottom:
Ask him to leave your violets
In peace, lest they betray him
And change to weeping at midnight.
Don Juan once made you
A touch of cosmetics on the cheeks
Of his wheedling despair?
Treasure the whim you had
To induce a mountebank to stop
Counting the scores in his heart.
Rabelais once offered you
Dung for your cloistered garden?
Let his cart in through the gates.
Delicacy twitches, twinkles
Better when it loves its enemy.
Jesus Christ once came
In the midst of your lithe caracoles,
Pity and sternness squeezed
Into the straight gleam of his smile?
Tell him to leap beside you
Like a vainglorious Boy,
Oh, tell him that austerity
Needs a dream of supple gaiety,
If only to wake with less of an ache
Hidden far below its measured breath.