| |
| I TRACED the comet’s tail of his renown | |
| To Faure’s rotisserie somewhere up town. | |
| |
| Yes, he had hands and feet about like mine. | |
| He didn’t mention winds and worlds and stars, | |
| But subjugated poetry to wine | 5 |
| And burnt up time and money in cigars. | |
| But I, young I, saw but the quick hot coals | |
| Purging their fiery passion on the grate. | |
| I thought: Beloved gossiper of souls, | |
| If only I could be insatiate | 10 |
| As you could be, and scourge you fiercely on— | |
| Leaping from dawn to dawn, | |
| Your unstopped pipes forever at your lips | |
| In free, untrammeled quest! | |
| |
| Instead I watched his drumming finger-tips | 15 |
| And heard his laughter at some still-born jest, | |
| And wondered if this were the great, strange child | |
| Who dreamt our dreams for us who only slept; | |
| If this were he who wept when others smiled | |
| And, further visioned, smiled when others wept. | 20 |
| |
| How bitterly I rose and looked him through! | |
| Then suddenly my pulses throbbed anew, | |
| I could have howled for joy!—sure enough | |
| He’d bent and scribbled something on his cuff! | |
| The kind of soup, perhaps—but for myself | 25 |
| The toppling Joss was back upon its shelf! | |
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