"Biography."
What, her uncle?
Yes, of course by marriage only and a dear, and rich,
and madly generous but 50, flabby
until near, till fumbling lay.
Those moans, those pants, no, not by any chance by chance.
What is a girl to do?
She fled keeping equally intact his trinkets
and her maiden hand declaiming how that girl could act.
Yards of pious sentiment she more than half
believe she meant.
Till a loafer with a loot but with sad dogs in his eyes
managed in an hour to tilt. And with no sense of surprise
all on which she had expended so much prose and all so splendid.
So pretending that their lives when they whispered them
in bed, like the sad dogs in his eyes,
like the cobwebs in her head were
a truth that could be told.
They kept each other from the cold.
He, both talented and trained, told his lies round
as the Psalms.
When he left her she remained busy trying various qualms
for a while.
Then ever after found such lies as sweet as laughter.
And laughed through her remaining life.
As laughter earned its own reward.
She was seven times a life without being really bored.
For when she had no husband near.
She inclined to share her cheer with various rather stoutly
built loafers with an easy lilt. And all the tears she ever
spilt world at the best of them would wilt while she was still
inclined to tilt. So much for the sense of guilt.
That's a light passage.
Well, how light is it?
I don't know.
What's the difference between a light poem and a heavy one?
I think if you take your subject seriously and yourself lightly,
you've got about the right balance.
Here's an--