My answers are inadequate To those demanding day and date And ever set a tiny shock Through strangers asking what’s o’… Whose days are spent in whittling…

The day that I was christened– It’s a hundred years, and more!- A hag came and listened At the white church door, A-hearing her that bore me

Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there,

If I had a shiny gun, I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brain… Of the folk who give me pains; Or had I some poison gas,

There was one a-riding grand On a tall brown mare, And a fine gold band He brought me there. A little, gold band

Into love and out again, Thus I went, and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your pe… Well and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung,

For one, the amaryllis and the ros… The poppy, sweet as never lilies a… The ripen’d vine, that beckons as… The dancing star. For one, the trodden rosemary and…

Lady, lady, should you meet One whose ways are all discreet, One who murmurs that his wife Is the lodestar of his life, One who keeps assuring you

Authors and actors and artists and… Never know nothing, and never know… Sculptors and singers and those of… Tell their affairs from Seattle t… Playwrights and poets and such hor…

This, no song of an ingénue, This, no ballad of innocence; This, the rhyme of a lady who Followed ever her natural bents. This, a solo of sapience,

I hate Parties; They bring out the worst in me. There is the Novelty Affair, Given by the woman Who is awfully clever at that sort…

Roses, rooted warm in earth, Bud in rhyme, another age; Lilies know a ghostly birth Strewn along a patterned page; Golden lad and chimbley sweep

Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed– I think they would be better dead.