ISIS
ISIS
My friend, the young artist, is clever and kind,
With a broad Roman forehead and deep German heart;
And though but a tyro, I cannot be blind
To his whimsical skill and his exquisite art.
I laugh at his quips, as I lounge in his room,
Where we gin the grum world with its duns and its debts,
Till spun by philosophy out of the gloom,
And Calle Obispo’s divine cigarettes.
Anon we play chess, with the odds of a pawn,
On an arabesque baize full of goblins and Circes;
You should see how he strangles a masculine yawn
As I gasp out my last little spasm of verses.
’Tis the game of my life, this game of the squares,
For my Queen of White Chessmen is coy as the stars;
When a bishop, like Dunstan, snakes up unawares
And soon there is nothing but death—or cigars!
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