YO VI ESTO

Sleep and I weren't speaking that year

So I was not wholly awake when Terpsichore
Wandered across the Midway and possessed
My Trusts and Estates professor, a small, squat man
Made uncomfortable by this sudden access of grace.
His lecture went on -- he was talking, I think,
About entails and the Statutes of Mortmain --
Though his every move had become a dance.
How that man could shimmy! His will was cast iron
His eyes like angry marbles. His closing words
Carried him down the aisle so that, at the bell,
He flung wide the door and tap danced away.

Muses

For the finest of all Venezuelanistas

In Rio, as the sun was sinking,

The Muses sat; they had been drinking

All that day, and through this folly

Some were mad and some were jolly

Some prey to loathed melancholy.

Fair Thalia sat and sadly wept

For debts unpaid and vows unkept

And floors that go for years unswept

By love-struck youths with brooms inept.

While Thalia’s tears like diamonds glistened

Clio spoke, of fates unchristened

Wise, though drunk, and no one listened.

The handsome barman’s young and thin

A kiss Melpomene blows to him;

Erato smiles into her gin

But while her drink she seeks to nurse

A hand has crept into her purse

She sees and mutters something terse

An Attic prayer, or else a curse.

“Polhymnia, you thieving crone

With no attribute of your own

Leave my credit cards alone!

I never trusted you, so calm

As if you were yourself a psalm.”

Euterpe sleeps, and in her dream

Calliope is run by steam,

In a world of blows and bruises

Where each man bets and each man loses

With very little room for Muses.

She wakes and pokes Terpsichore

“Oh say my dream through ivory

Came falsely now to trouble me

Into my mind so slyly creeping!”

Her sister nods, and goes on sleeping.

The stars come out, and for their trouble

Urania squints and sees them double.