Summer was power-mowed, and autumn, burned.
Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned
Into a wood duck. And again your voice:
320"But this is prejudice! You should rejoice
That she is innocent. Why overstress
The physical? She _wants_ to look a mess.
Virgins have written some _resplendent_ books.
Lovemaking is not everything. Good looks
Are not that indispensable!" And still
Old Pan would call from every painted hill.
And still the demons of our pity spoke:
No lips would share the lipstick of her smoke;
The telephone that rang before a ball
330Every two minutes in Sorosa Hall
For her would never ring; and, with a great
Screeching of tires on gravel, to the gate
Out of the lacquered night, a white-scarfed beau
Would never come for her; she'd never go,
A dream of gauze and jasmine, to that dance.
We sent her, though, to a château in France.
And she returned in tears, with new defeats,
New miseries. On days when all the streets
Of College Town led to the game, she'd sit
340On the library steps, and read or knit;
Mostly alone she'd be, or with that nice
Frail roommate, now a nun; and, once or twice,
With a Korean boy who took my course.
She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force
Of character - as when she spent three nights
Investigating certain sounds and lights
In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
350She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize
Ferociously our projects, and with eyes
Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed
Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head
With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,
Murmuring dreadful words in monotone.
She was my darling - difficult, morose -
But still my darling. You remember those
Almost unruffled evenings when we played
360Mah-jongg, or she tried on your furs, which made
Her almost fetching; and the mirrors smiled,
The lights were merciful, the shadows mild,
Sometimes I'd help her with a Latin text,
Or she'd be reading in her bedroom, next
To my fluorescent lair, and you would be