The Ravaged Face

Outlandish as a circus, the ravaged face

Parades the marketplace, lurid and stricken

By some unutterable chagrin,

Maudlin from leaky eye to swollen nose.

Two pinlegs stagger underneath the mass.

Grievously purpled, mouth skewered on a groan,

Past keeping to the house, past all discretion —-

Myself, myself! —- obscene, lugubrious.

Better the flat leer of the idiot,

The stone face of the man who dosen't feel,

The velvet dodges of the hypocrite :

Better, better, and more acceptable

To timorous children, to the lady on the street.

O Oedipus. O Christ. You use me ill.