The Azure Tower

(To F. R. Shortstick-Forcemer )

I envy you the able zeal

With which you seek to think and feel,

And all the powers of getting there

We minors envy, but don't share.

I like the way you think of love

With every fierce, impassioned move,

And bleat romance with Latin power

(To hold her in an azure tower

Above the horses and the fields).

Each breathy word its profit yields,

As though you played the saxophone

And sent her with its heavenly tone.

The dainty winged loves reveal

Rewards for every stack you deal;

Marked card and joker, knave and ace,

Each turns up trumps to save her face. _

Perhaps, as, when you stoke a train,

It goes the quicker, you'd maintain

Your agile forces wisely spent

In speeding what's self-evident:

To speak of politics and win

A handsome leg at every grin,

To sit in cinemas and feel

A clutching hand at every reel,

The acme of all sex-appeall

(And yet the watching eyes reveal

That hawk and horse and field betray -

This pastoral peace is just dismay,

The people do not have their day,

The subtle villain has his way

Inside the forces of the Left.

She sits upon her tower bereft.)

And I admit I envy you

The careless evil that you do,

Who am too sober and too good

To wax fat on such turpitude.

I walk by the betraying shore

And hear the glubbing breakers snore,

And past the tower float acridly

The lonely wimbrel and its cry.

Nicnozas Moore