Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 4: 'You' by Ram Spudd Stephen Leacock

For the month, the fourth of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

Verse from Ram Spudd, "one of nature's gentlemen," as celebrated in Stephen Leacock's Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (Toronto: Gundy, 1915).

YOU

                                          You!

With your warm, full, rich, red, ripe lips,

And your beautifully manicured finger-tips!

                                          You!

With your heaving, panting, rapidly expanding and contracting chest,

Lying against my perfectly ordinary shirt-front and dinner-jacket vest.

                                 It is too much

                                 Your touch

                                 As such.

                                 It and

                                 Your hand,

                           Can you not understand?

Last night an ostrich feather from your fragrant hair

                                Unnoticed fell.

                                I guard it

                                Well.

                                Yestere’en

                           From your tiara I have slid,

                               Unseen,

                               A single diamond,

                               And I keep it

                               Hid.

Last night you left inside the vestibule upon the sill

                               A quarter dollar,

                               And I have it

                               Still.

Related post:

Lunar Attractions; or, The Leacock I Like