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“To err is human, to forgive divine.”   —Alexander Pope



I. FRENCH VAUDEVILLE

When a good wine furnishes my stomach,
I am more learned than Honore de Balzac—
Wiser than the commune Pibrac;
My only brass making the attack
Of the nation Cossack;
The swarm in the sack;
Of Charon I posses the lake,
By sleeping in his receptacle;
I reside in proud Eac,
Without my heart making tic nor tack,
Presenter of tobacco!

Everything before the act begins is slow,
The lights dim, the people whisper, very braggadocio.

The camel-swallow buries her head in the sand,
Hiding her hideous visage, shattered, lost, the hand
That mocked them, the intricate feather-duster swarms
Through the air, cluster of dirt, like terrific thunder storms,
And all the crowd whisper and mumble low, the ostrich
Raises her head, the magnificent periscope,
She prances, flirts, her lashes long, the stage a kaleidoscope;
She dances and somebody eats a grotesque orange—
Then the ladies sing, dressed in black.
Who let the cat out of the sack?
Men dressed in suits and ties
Women solemn, singing lullabies
To their children beside them.

The romantic chasm charms the seer
Of the oxymoron, the ostrich and the deer.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

Everything before the act begins is slow,
The lights dim, the people whisper, very braggadocio.

Concert saloons, minstrelsy, freak shows,
Dime museums, literary burlesque—who knows?
Musicians with divine apparatuses,
Female dancers that are lustful and sweet,
Comedians that are ignoramuses,
Trained animals that fear retreat;
Magicians which exhaust the French language,
Impersonators of their foes,
Acrobats floating midway in the air of woe,
One-acts and scenes of Mann’s Mario;
Athletes that are late, which delay
Lecturing celebrities of Crane’s reportage;
French minstrels plucking a fiddle of mirage,
And short movies of everyone’s garage.

The mustachioed intruder of intent
Places the juggling seals, hell-bent
To toss the red balls into the darkness grim.
They, dressed in one-piece costumes in a hue
Of dark, twilight, malignant blue;
Yellow stars patch the felt-work,
Pink collars surround their chins and napes,
Along their slick backs are pink capes;
Their skin is white and pure,
I am almost sure,
Pink makeup circles their eyes,
Ruddy noses on the tip of the snout,
They blabber gibberish, and lionize,
Jump through rings, and suffer with gout.

Arf!—arf!—arf! they speak, like whimpering dogs,
Bellowing deep, their bodies wide as logs.


II. THE SEVEN AGES OF MAN

First is the infant, born of man and woman,
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, states Whitman;
Groaning and puking in the nurse’s arms.

The schoolboy whines, carries his bag of books,
His face shining like a morning-glory.
He creeps slowly like a snail lost in its shell,
He doesn’t want to go to school—
He skips—makes him look like a fool.

Puberty springs, then he becomes a lover
Who sighs like a mighty, coal-consuming furnace,
His heart, at the beset of his beloved, which can hover
Above them, with a woeful ballad of duress,
A song sung to his mistress’s eyebrow
Or an ode to a water-fowl.

Arf!—arf!—arf! they speak, like whimpering dogs,
Bellowing deep, their bodies wide as logs.

He then becomes a vested soldier,
Full of strange oaths promised, beared like the leopard,
Jealous in honor, likes his beef-jerky peppered;
Sudden and quick in quarrel, full of scorn,
Seeking the bubble reputation in a field of corn.
In the mouth of the grueling cannon—his horrid mourn.

Justice blinded follows forth from the scales,
In a fair belly round, massive like a whale’s;
With good castrated