CHLORINDA in the slipping gown
Unblushingly parades her soul
For clinical inspection as
Example of the Sapphic r?le;
While Doris shudders gracefully
And droops against the man in black,
Confessing that she marvels at
His length of limb and breadth of back.
(Dear Doris: so ingenuous!
Emotionally so sincere!)
The man in black is wholly charmed,
And lends a firm, hedonic ear.
Repression is the moment’s theme:
Gerald holds forth on Oedipus
And mentions dire catastrophies
That tastes of his may bring to us.
If we attempt to circumvent
Our fateful Attic heritage —
Wadding his argument around
With splendid Freudian verbiage.
The slim young man against the wall,
With pretty blushes epicene,
Evokes the shade of Socrates,
And lectures from the fire-screen.
Close by him sits Elizabeth,
Her pale hands bluely rectinerved:
Example virginal and wan
Of bunkered fuel too long reserved.
Elizabeth bewails her fate
With frankness not quite unafraid:
The room is tenderly inclined,
But no Satyros proffers aid.
And so from hand to eager hand
The facile ball of talk is sped.
One waits for, misses, and laments
The absent lover of the dead.
Black was the Hellespont those nights
When, for a priestess of Sestos,
Leander slipped into the flood
From the still town of Abydos.
What theories sustained his stroke
When all the world was overcast,
And Freud and Jung still humbly lurked
In unexpressed spermatoblast?
Did Orestes and Plyades,
While camping by their Grecian streams,
Exchange, interpret and set down
The revelations of their dreams?
Sappho, Jocasta, Oedipus —
Your names go round the room tonight,
Illuminated by our modern blaze
Of psychoanalytic light.
We pity you your sightless years,
And celebrate out learned day:
But Doris and the man in black,
With ancient wisdom, steal away.
(Ben Ray Redman)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, World Poems, Light Poems, Dreams Poems, Wisdom & Knowledge Poems, Sincerity PoemsBased on Keywords: inspection, parades, facile, camping, hellespont, orestes, proffers, ingenuous, mentions, unexpressed, bewails