Classic Poem

I

Clear me with this master music
when the coryphee skips on the oak floor
and the clouds depress me like the lower keys.
This drama sets the clocks of epigram.

The grave salons with lines of peridot
in the grave interior and cairngorm pomp
attest refinements of the clavichord.

The pieces are the will of shadows
and the person in the polished doorway
feels the dark mask of his chamber sentiments.

These are the privacies behind the mask
but they are not the manners of a boy
who blows his French horn, smiles at twelve o'clock
and sips the old port from the hostess' shoe.

This etiquette is stranger than the fellowship
which turns an apricot liqueur
and absinthe into innocence,
the bottles into happy unities
among the pie-eyed sobbing hooligans.