SONG IN THE SHADE
How shaded you are in the vine, Calvus,
And yet you think our verses will upbraid
And, cataractous, be the death of us?
You see how keen on carbon copies I’m uplaid,
All unctuous against the slavish numbers,
Lit glancingly, I doggedly elide
If only to broach, my sometime counter,
The sea that barters its clock for candor.
Who walks that way, like Cypress in the wind?
To Italy with that monstrous villainy
That crowns our arbus with a sea-thing’s fin.
Yet how breezy you are, in the mutiny
I hear Tubas—the glosses are runic
The light makes dapples all along your tunic.