The argument: a play which never begins and whose actors are permanently rehearsing.
By Nirina Mignon
Let me remain unsatisfied,
Accepting the bed of thorns’ welcome chide
Before deadened stage, in silent wake
Of supple stirrings and thrusting stake:
Clorinda, with sylvan flourish, with punctured wail
Hath her conceit not lost, to rehearsed avail.
With want of correction, the violence of our excess
Its trite play yawns for recess.
With a mouth most indigent to gifts,
Our joys and dolors lie in vaginam,
Sheathed politely by this proscenium,
Which in swaddling rags gave us idle seat
To watch regret receive the hour’s nursing teat;
To see my Narcisse in the Nevá lowered,
For his golden eddies to become my spikenard.
The gentle tenebrism on his brow oblique,
Desultory, divides th’ fulness of febrile cheek,
Through nuptial-worn abeyance, the light and minutes descanted.
“So, has it not yet started?”