Ballad of Love Antique
To be vulnerable is to ask for contest,
beg for Violence with its mate, Death,
to invite them inside for tea and biscuit.
While Violence is gratuitous and warm-mannered,
Death is patient and wise.
Together they function so well
that it comes as a surprise:
How could one so warm find one so cold?
Clearly there is more to romance;
How could one so young love one so old?
more than common hypnotic trance;
What a beautiful thing that is
when two love each other so–
so earnest and so unabashed–
to see old lovers grow.
As they sit inside my house,
munching crackers and brie,
I invite them to talk with me
about the things that they have seen:
“Today,” says Death, calm and aloof,
“I saw a woman cry.
She claimed I took a life away,
but she had not yet even died”
“Ha!” chortled Violence,
rubicund and ripe,
“I saw that woman last night
in the strangest light!”
“She wanted to seek money,
love, romance, and child,
but when she told her lover,
he shamelessly tasted bile.”
“He packed and bought a plane ticket–
somewhere beyond the Nile–
and when she found it,
lying askance on the tiles,”
“she called up her mother,
gushed forth, and burst her eye,
and when she was through with her
she called me up to cry:”
“‘I never did him wrong!
I would never even try!
How, When, Where, Why?
Won’t I surely die?'”
“This foolish child I assured,
to the best of my ability,
that her love was simply found
by another amenity;”
“that to mourn him was a waste,
as that should have already been done,
by the time she intercepts him
the process has fully run.”
“I visited her that night,
alone in her bed,
as she spoke softly
and thought of things she said”
“In hot blood I soothed her
made her skin lacrimate
until in gentle passion
she began to gestate”
“This child she bears still,
round emotional avarice,
and she thinks of me still
when she feels herself pregnant”
Violence smiled a silly grin,
evoking his youthful charm,
and he proceeded briefly again,
as he tends to go on:
“You know I met the man too,
once long ago,
back when the two began,
he put on quite a show.”
“He had persuaded me to accompany him
to Italy and Germany
to charm this woman, a girl then,
into sweeter seductivities”
“I followed him for some time,
allowing him my hurl,
for when he found a mate he sought
he would display our rigmarole:”
“I simply tossed him in the air
and with great gravitas
he descended sharply, screaming,
‘Please help, without which I am lost!'”
“Reliably this show would succeed
in driving away the crowd;
should the mate remain
he would chase her off with sound.”
“We enjoyed this activity much,
back in our oatsy youth,
but soon, he said, we’d ‘settle down’
and seek subtler pursuits”
“At last, in Munich, we did just that
when this woman (then girl) we did meet
and she, blithely, did not abscond
from our death-defying feat”
“So like fire he came and tore her up
espoused love so vehement and violent
and in this capacity he rendered her weak,
tractable, malleable, and pliant”
“Together we forged a mighty weapon,
something to be abhorred,
but these were my younger days
and, as such, I found myself bored”
“Leaving the two of them,” Violence huffed,
his voice now strangely quiet,
“I set out to Österreich on my own
puzzled and defiant”
Violence paused, drank his tea,
and turned to his gentle muse,
they shared a smile and Death,
now rubbing his feet, kissed his toes.
“Regardless, and to conclude,”
shouted Violence with final resolve,
“I believe they got on quite well,
employing that trick we evolved.”
All us three sat back into our chairs,
recalling fond memories and curious repairs,
but Death not once again spoke, so humble and kind,
but, upon parting, whispered meekly, inclined:
“I appreciate your hospitality; you have been most sincere,
for I travel much and have a broad ear,
but to spend an evening here is my favorite repose,
for when I wake in the morning I do not even change my clothes”