Retired Actress

This florid Rubens woman hides by day

in some estaminet and first at night

like a furred moth comes swimming to the light,

flings open the red door of the café.

Rich as an autumn sunset, with a spilth

of over-ripeness, posed on a gilt crook

(which props her up instead of Lloyd's or Cook's),

she sprays us with a speech of marvelous filth:

terse words one learned from adolescent fences,

reflections on our mothers and our past;

picks up somebody's bock, blows off the foam,

kills it, sits down-this archetype of wenches-

quite uninvited, sighs, and slumps at last . . .

as if she had been lost but has got home.