Conversation Galante

I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic I confess)
It may be Prester John's balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers in their distress-"
She then: "How you digress."

And I then: "Someone frames upon the keys,
That exquisite nocture, with which we explain
The night and moonshine, music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity."
She then: "Does this refer to me?"
"Oh no, it is I who am insane."

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
Eternal enemy of the absolute
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute-"
And -- "Are we then so serious?"

T.S. Eliot

(typed from memory, 'cause I just recited it at Andy's fledgling poetry recitation group "SpeakMuse," and then corrected from Bartleby.)

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