Lullaby by W.H. Auden

Lullaby
by W.H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find your mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Charmed by accuracy (a brief recap of being so)

Charmed by accuracy

(a brief recap of being so)

I brought her a treat, well, it's a treat to me. Desert facsimile. A protein bar with chocolate appeal.

She seemed eager, “Oh!”

“Well, it's a protein bar, so it doesn't taste great”, I wanted, I tried,

but before the confession could come

she had the 'food-stuff' rectangle somewhere inside

I paused,

watching her expression, and with some expectation.

...

Pleasure perhaps?

Instead a slightly confused look and her earnest proclamation,

both precise and correct,

“It tastes like the shoe aisle in Zellers! The smell, it tastes.”

Exactly.

and with a giggle., I think.