We lie amidst Ripe mountain herbs,
The nightingale has just begun its summer trill,
This hymn for golden vocal cords
Composed no owner of a writing quill

So sweet were melodies produced
That I mistook the front row lady’s cheap perfume
For blossoms, above which haunting hornets mused;
For an aroma of our Shakespeare love in bloom.

The serenading cardboard creatures –
Those thieve their voice from birds with no address.
Meanwhile a glass raised in a playhouse features
But colored water, as red as gipsy’s dress.

When the last spectator goes,
Having not found at least one genuine sun,
As actors, we recede into descending roles;
Electric blood in lamps’ capillaries feels numb.  

A lovely ladybug, I doubt, I will ever catch,
A lifelike flower, dipped in a painting fusion:
All this, fine artists tenderly attach  
To lifeless decorations, for aid they do us in a willful staged illusion.

Three burnt sienna pearls run down your spine
Yet after a big round of applause
These jewels are no longer signs of the divine,
But witches’ marks or, rather, unalluring flaws.

After the play I went to buy a notebook from my shopping list
To store the overgrowing verses, such as these;
A sheet of paper guarantees
To treat them like extinguishing bees

Cashiers ****** the change into my hand,
You purchased hothouse roses with;
And up those pretty useless beauties stand
In someone’s vase, whose name remains a myth.

They give me back those polished dimes
You traded for a pair of shoes.
I’ve seen you marshal through onstage lifetimes,
Yet to disclose personas’ traces the theater walls refuse.

Your chocolate hair has just fallen from the hairdresser’s hand,–
That’s how I know the summer’s coming to a bitter end.