What brings you unannounced into my room?
Were you not ushered in by my mistress,
Who sits each day as serene as the evening,
Who lounges in her seat by the luxurious door
During my dull and never ending afternoons?
Do you believe you can enter my apartment
Like this, without a sound, with no introduction,
Just because you wish to look upon my evening
Of contemplation where nothing ever happens?
Where is she—she, who swoons between dusk and dusk?
She listens every night for a stranger to come
Who might have a smoothness in the throat
To evoke what passes for talk of the muse.
But in the morning she weaves drops of dew
To make a net of pearl for children
Whose rhetoric promises poems
Written by lovely, tortured persons growing old.
Some say my mistress is my muse
As well as one who reposes, pale and watchful
For the visitor of the sudden, deft knock
Wishing entrance without the usual prelude.
She maintains a disdain lovely to behold.
Never in doubt, she sits in my front room,
Lovelier than the dullest evening which finds
Women serpentine in long dresses. But she is not my muse.
She is my mistress, my usher. Her fragility is touching
And I love her more than— Did she forget to announce you?