a girl I used to know 23 years ago...
She's still alive, by the way, and hasn't changed at all...



The Bawd



An ugly old cow in a night-gown and challenging hips
walks thus out in the street, dressed in slippers
to swing them around just to make people watch;
swears and spits like a man, her vulgarity worse than a pimp's,
treating every man worse than a dumbbell,
with no respect except for virgins,
chain-smoking almost like some intermittent vulcano
and boozing but coffee except wine or port, brandy, whisky or spirits;
can stand any stuff, having guts made of iron and steel,
hardly reacting at all to her burning them out systematically.
But this bawd is a reader.
She has education like nobody else,
with a limitless library and no end to all her languages:
English, French, German and Spanish
is her conversation and brilliance of wit,
and she reads the most difficult literature in five tongues.
Her most favoured darlings are Pasternak and Stefan Zweig.
What intelligence! What a magnificent talent!
And all this concealed beyond such a facade of vulgarity,
those seven layers of paint and those curtains of cannabis smoke,
buried under that permanent booze of wine, brandy and whisky
and that sordid traffic of creeps, crawling creatures called men.
My dear heavenly muse of such splendid distinction and wisdom,
- who pushed you down in that alley? Who turned you thus on,
and who made you thus thwarted grotesquely?
And why was not I allowed into your presence
before thus your soul was so unjustly buried
beneath heaps of memories and disappointments
of love stories turned into such bitter sadness
of corpses remaining forever?





Poetry by Christian Lanciai The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 414 times
Written on 2006-10-07 at 11:54

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keith nunes
fascinating piece! what an amazing woman - in all sorts of ways. thanks for sharing this
2006-10-07