Does not dissolve my stoicism. Women who measure their gifts for lovers Never hope for more than this. II UNLITERARY AND SHAMELESS _A young woman who has been renounced by her lover, because of her lack of culture, answers his derision._ Your cloistered naughtiness Makes me as boisterous As a savage attending A minstrel-show of regrets. The pampered carefulness With which you distil a series Of standardized perfumes from life Takes its promenade Between the realms of sanity and madness. You are too precise to be quite sane And too evasive to be insane, And all that you have left me Is a mood of windy sadness-- Emotions becoming verbose In a last thin effort To persuade themselves that they loved A jewel that slipped from your fingers. Your mind is a limpid warehouse Filled with other mens’ creations, And you pilfer a bit from each, Disguising the scheme of your culture. I would rather be a naked fool Than a full-gowned erudite Imitation of other mens’ hands. I shall marry a desperado And give him strength with which to paint Black angels and muscular contortions On panels of taffeta. TWO SONNETS TO MY WIFE I Because her voice is Schönberg in a dream In which his harshness plays with softer keys This does not mean that it is void of ease And cannot gather to a strolling gleam. Her voice is full of manners and they seem To place a masquerade on thought and tease Its strength until it finds that it has knees, And whimsically leaves its heavy scheme. Discords can be the search of harmony For worlds that lie beyond the reach of poise And must be captured with abandoned hands. The music of my wife strives to be free And often takes a light, unbalanced voice While madly walking over thoughtful lands. II My wife relents to life and does not speak Each moment with a deft and rapid note. Sometimes a clumsy weirdness finds in her throat And ushers in a music that is weak And bargains with the groping of her heart. But even then she plays with graver tones That do not sell themselves to laughs and moans But seek the counsel of a deeper art. She drapes her loud emotions in a shroud Of glistening thought that waves above their dance And sometimes parts to show their startled eyes. The depths of mind within her have not bowed To sleek emotion with its amorous glance. She slaps its face and laughs at its surprise! FINALITIES I