MORE than the renovated mandolin (complete with case) hangs here
Among the bogus trophies, pearl opera glasses, and synthetic stones:
These are the porch-swing summer nights and honeysuckle of another year;
Here is the fin de siècle still preserved in brittle bones.
“We were sailing along on Moonlight Ba-ay” —
Ten easy lessons, and anyone can play . . .
With your new straw hat and your ice cream pants
You’ll never be a wallflower, once you learn to dance.
More than the (17 jewels) watch presented as a graduation gift
And the imitation pigskin Gladstone bag, the yellow-gold cull links:
How many bus terminals and buck-a-night hotels, how swift
Arrival and departure of the decades, and how many drinks.
Big-Time Charlie urns a local white-haired lad
Who went to the city where local boys make bad . . .
Oh, that shirt-sleeve poker and that bathtub gin;
The paunch grows stout while the hair goes thin.
And this, the wedding band (behind the amber dice, the Croix de guerre),
Symbol of something or other foundered on the matrimonial rocks;
And other companion pieces in keeping with the wedding ring are there:
Fur coats (relined and glazed, of course), the guns, the banjo clocks.
“Listen, dearie, I told him some things he won’t forget —
I gave him a lot, but I’ve got a lot left yet” . . .
Lady who knew a thousand traveling men,
It’s time to get that platinum hair retouched again.
The pawnshop window is a bell jar of wax flowers under glass:
Wax heartbreak and 10 k. gold despair; the watches tick futility;
The telescopes (brass-mounted) regard the yesterdays that are as grass;
This shaving mirror is your intricate and meaningless biography.