Miranda married a rich man And spent his money so fast that he failed. She lashed him with a scorpion tongue And made him believe at last With her incessant reasonings That he was a fool, and so had failed. In middle life he started over again, But became tangled in a law-suit. Because of these things he killed himself. Louise was a nymphomaniac. She was married twice. Both husbands fled from her insatiable embraces. At thirty-two she became a woman on a telephone list, Subject to be called, And for two years ran through a daily orgy of sex, When blindness came on her, as it came on her father before her, And she became a Christian Scientist, And led an exemplary life. Deborah was a Puritan of Puritans, Her list of unmentionable things Tabooed all the secrets of creation, Leaving politics, religion, and human faults, And the mistakes most people make, And the natural depravity of man, And his freedom to redeem himself if he chooses, As the only subjects of conversation. As a twister of words and meanings, And a skilled welder of fallacies, And a swift emerger from ineluctable traps of logic, And a wit with an adder's tongue, And a laugher, And an unafraid facer of enemies, Oppositions, hatreds, She never knew her equal. She was at once very cruel, and very tender, Very selfish and very generous Very little and very magnanimous. Scrupulous as to the truth, and utterly disregardless of the truth. Of the keenest intuitions, yet gullible, Easily used at times, of erratic judgment, Analytic but pursuing with incredible swiftness The falsest trails to her own undoing-- All in all the strangest mixture of colors and scent Derived from father and mother, But mixed by whom, and how, and why? Now for the son named Herman, rebel soul. His brow was like a loaf of bread, his eyes Turned from his father's blue to gray, his nose Was like his mother's, skin was dark like hers. His shapely body, hands and feet belonged To some patrician face, not to Marat's. And his was like Marat's, fanatical, Materialistic, fierce, as it might guide A reptile's crawl, but yet he crawled to peaks Loving the hues of mists, but not the mists His father loved. And being a rebel soul He thought the world all wrong. A nothingness Moving as malice marred the life of man. 'Twas man's great work to fight this Giant Fraud, And all who praise and serve Him. 'Tis for man To free the world from error, suffer, die For liberty of thought. You see his mother Is in possession of one part of him, Or all of him for some time.