Sylvia

“Sylvia” by Danielle Piper Bloom

Go to now, you blonde devil-muse!
Hang your hide against the hierarchy host!

That stiff wood that is wood-stiff
Though wish it well to be softened
Beacons for the life of me
And I cannot baste it.

You are a time-worm, the weak withe-pulp
That will in a day be confident!

I was never less a widow than you,
For always you seemed a thing more mutable than me
With no husband to kiss away the tears, the fears.
Even I have more a companion than you!

He ended the day you came my way, with much stronger
The words than he. And how he devised you for that much!

You are no egotist, though your poetry speaks us so!
What a despicable way to portray those away,
For the dead feel the ache of the angry living,
And you, my friend, are the center for that!

Oh beautiful blonde! Oh careless dead!
How is it you end no chariot for me; no merchant-desk?

You spoke all death an art, but oh, how wrong you were!
It is living that is the skill, and how you wronged the will
To do that land-mark which holds me to my poetry and yours
In that comity of current affairs!

And if only that affair were yours,
My beautiful blonde! My blonde devil-muse!