Favors

Turner Cassity

Comus who end the carnival,
Largesse who on your float of treasures
Bear the gifts we seek, let fall
Such trinkets as will be our futures.

Give, but give without distinction.
To the luckless fling the dice,
And to the cured of fever, unction
In its waxen phial. Toss,

To all the young and warm of flesh,
The china skull to chain their keys;
To all who cough the tray for ash.
To who are old a sand that flees;

Unto each cripple canes of candy.
It is we who take the toss
Who sort the lots that we shall end,
In time, without or with. The loss?

Who has the limp must time the egg.
Dip, therefore, to who bargain, Comus,
Yours the cup: libation quick
To slow the timer, spare, unmaim us.