A Modern, Formal Marriage


He drinks his scotch and soda; she sips tea.
"A patient on a table, etherized..."
and then, with happy flourish:  "Poetry"--
his proclamation's auto-canonized.
She thinks, then stammers "Bullskrit!  Evening sky!
And death to all dead uncles in the yard!"
She quotes from Chaucer, calls it "Poetrye;"
He takes the couch; she takes it rather hard.

At dawn she makes him soft-boiled eggs and toast.
He grins, and stoops to kiss her brow.  Becalmed,
she laughs to think he called his wife a ghost--
she'll never think him more than corpse, embalmed.
His bloodless verses are, by freedom, chained,
and souls cannot be saved, once hearts are brained.