I have known women

28 July 2023

I have known women (I have known them well)
but what women are thinking I never shall tell,
for one dreams of a home as one dreams to be free,
and another is cursed by the blessings in me.
I shall answer with questions and this much avow,
that the life of the living is death anyhow,
but the solitude curses the wanderer fair
with the foul and pestilent, pitiless, bare,
until ragged or richly he comes to surmise
that with women he was at least somewhat prized.
But too late, alas, they have all found their homes,
as he sups with the misers and picks at the bones.