Charles deGuire Christoph

From “Reflections”

WHAT is there that mocks me in a woman’s eyes?

There is a taste of disdain even in my mistress’s kiss.

And I have told them I am very wise.

What is the melodrama I’m the victim of?

I fear I’m a songbird for a show of marionettes:

So says the playman, a tender little dove.

If their skirts swish like clarinets

And their breasts are silken tambourines,

Then I’ve a little opera, but it’s not enough.

Why holds that merriment in the pipes of love?

What’s in a woman’s head, what under her hermiton?

Not a sigh, not a wound will the cure be,

But laughing, the wind laughing

Over the torn trees as the elder satyrs

Run drunken before it and the maenads

Hide in the old caves.