There is enough left, he says - holding the bottle up to the light - to soak up the flux of sorrow. The cat moans in the alley, one old Tom out for adventure among the moonlit angles of the alleys. He seeks what I drink out of existence. I don't mean women don't tempt me with their fiddleheads of hair loosed from croquet-hoop pins to drift into a down cage about my head. But I no longer want their softness under me. I fear the quicksand suck of lust so I wrap myself in a blanket of booze and am self-sufficient in the night, while Tom tongues the ice from his paws. Still, I would like a woman - a high noise in the house. There's less left in the bottle now, he says. Maybe she would hold me as I fumble up the stairs helped by some young man, and in the next room I would hear them make love as the cold hives about the house and be warm in that. I would fall asleep into the sounds of their love and wake to the snow draping the window, absolved of my sex, to feed the cat come in cold and content from his quest. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE, FR. SONGS OF EXPERIENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE EPITAPH: FOR A LADY I KNOW by COUNTEE CULLEN THE FAIREST THING IN MORTAL EYES by CHARLES D'ORLEANS THE TWINS by HENRY SAMBROOKE LEIGH LOVE SONG by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS LYSISTRATA: HYMN OF PEACE; CHORUSES OF ATHENIANS AND SPARTANS by ARISTOPHANES |