Sir Frank Dicksee    La Belle Dame Sans Merci

                               Everloss


I don't well hear your echoes in these crowded, buzzing rooms;
I see no stars in sequins, no fires well-disguised
in hapless, guileless faces ever-present, ever-plain--
I'm helpless to idealize the least banal refrain.
Perhaps I'll have too much to drink, as everyone assumes,
and gaze upon the window-- lightly finger-tap the pane,
peruse the introspection of the quiet, pleasant rain--
or search for quiet elsewhere, and re-create your eyes
while hiding in the closet with the overcoats and brooms.

Would I could twist the words that have, unworded, twisted me,
and give a hang for fear, and hide my ego in the lee...

The hostess well may notice, present friends may feel the slight,
but I cannot bear this noise; cannot help but leave, aloof
to each and all the voices, all these niceties of now
which break like beads of rain upon a pallid, furrowed brow.
The many-faced minutiae of the you-less evernight,
which breaks upon your memory like ice upon the bow,
composes song as everlost as music will allow.
And later, I shall laugh to think how I was bulletproof,
and shiver in the solitude of ice and Kryptonite.