Joy

She blew at me those bubbles of joy,
Evanescent and effervescent,
Like a heady autumn breeze,
That blew for me, her choicest scent,

That ruffled the pages, an open book,
Long forgotten, long unattended,
Scraps of a tatterdemalion's life,
A corner, a robe, a heart that bled,

I dwelt for a moment outside me,
Oh what web my mistress spun!
I left my tales of woe and pain,
And the tragic rhyme that I'd begun,

And in a moment, quick as they came,
They fizzled, broke and left me drenched,
Melancholic, as the poet in me,
His strangest, arcane thirst, now quenched!