In my infinite wisdom
I tell you this thing,
In this here my kingdom
Will the pendulum swing;
One minute the Kurds
So cute in their garb,
The other the Turks
With their venomous barb.
......
I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
......
When I was young and had no sense
In far-off Mandalay
I lost my heart to a Burmese girl
As lovely as the day.
Her skin was gold, her hair was jet,
Her teeth were ivory;
I said, 'for twenty silver pieces,
Maiden, sleep with me'.
......
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
......
By dark severance the apparition head
Smiles from the air a capital on no
Column or a Platonic perhaps head
On a canvas sky depending from nothing;
Stirs up an old illusion of grandeur
By tickling the instinct of heads to be
Absolute and to try decapitation
And to play truant from the body bush;
......
How wonderful our world
of ingrained peace and tranquillity
with lives of eternal happiness,
As the lives that we live are carefree
And by the way, my best friend is called irony
How great our climate
Because man, in his creativity, has made gases
that fills our atmosphere
Trapping heat from the sun
......
Sinners are always mentally stronger
While the strong turn mostly sinners.
Secular forces are the communal pawns
Violence and conflicts are social sores.
Women boldly flaunt their macho look
While men show their feme demeanors.
Most of the rich are poor by their heart
......
In my infinite wisdom
I tell you this thing,
In this here my kingdom
Will the pendulum swing;
One minute the Kurds
So cute in their garb,
The other the Turks
With their venomous barb.
......
My first I wed when just sixteen
And he was sixty-five.
He treated me like any queen
The years he was alive.
Oh I betrayed him on the sly,
Like any other bitch,
and how I longed for him to die
And leave me young and rich!
My second is a gigolo
......
Since I have come to years sedate
I see with more and more acumen
The bitter irony of Fate,
The vanity of all things human.
Why, just to-day some fellow said,
As I surveyed Fame's outer portal:
"By gad! I thought that you were dead."
Poor me, who dreamed to be immortal!
But that's the way with many men
......