In an uncurtained room across the way



a woman in a tight dress paints her lips



a deeper red, and sizes up her hips



for signs of ounces gained since yesterday.







She has a thoughtful and a clever face,



but she is also smart enough to know



the truth: however large the brain may grow,



the lashes and the earrings must keep pace.







Although I’ve spread my books in front of me



with a majestic air of I’ll show her,



I’m much less confident than I’d prefer,



and now I’ve started pacing nervously.







I’m poring over theorems, tomes and tracts.



I’m getting ready for a heavy date



by staying up ridiculously late.



But a small voice advises, Face the facts:







go on this way and you’ll soon come to harm.



The world’s most famous scholars wander down



the most appalling alleyways in town,



a blond and busty airhead on each arm.







There is an inner motor known as lust



that makes a man of learning walk a mile



to gratify his raging senses, while



the woman he can talk to gathers dust.







A chilling vision of the years ahead



invades my thoughts, and widens like a stain:



a barren dance card and a teeming brain,



a crowded bookcase and an empty bed...







What if I compromised? I’d stay up late



to hone my elocutionary skills,



and at the crack of dawn I’d swallow pills



to calm my temper and control my weight,







but I just can’t. Romantics, so far gone



they think their lovers live for wisdom, woo



by growing wiser; when I think of you



I find the nearest lamp and turn it on.







Great gods of longing, watch me as I work



and if I sprout a martyr’s smarmy grin



please find some violent way to do me in;



I’m burning all these candles not to shirk







a night of passion, but to give that night



a richly textured backdrop when it comes.



The girl who gets up from her desk and dumbs



her discourse down has never seen the flight







of wide-eyed starlings from their shabby cage;



the fool whose love is truest is the one



who knows a lover’s work is never done.



I’ll call you when I’ve finished one more page.





