Never trust a white man,
Never **** a Jew,
Never sign a contract,
Never rent a pew.
Don't enlist in armies;
Nor marry many wives;
Never write for magazines;
Never scratch your hives.
Always put paper on the seat,
Don't believe in wars,
Keep yourself both clean and neat,
Never marry ******.
Never pay a blackmailer,
Never go to law,
Never trust a publisher,
Or you'll sleep on straw.
All your friends will leave you
All your friends will die
So lead a clean and wholesome life
And join them in the sky.

I don't ask you to be faithful - you're beautiful, after all -
but just that I be spared the pain of knowing.
I make no stringent demands that you should really be chaste,
but only that you try to cover up.
If a girl can claim to be pure, it's the same as being pure:
it's only admitted vice that makes for scandal.
What madness, to confess by day what's wrapped in night,
and what you've done in secret, openly tell!
The ******, about to bed some Roman off the street
still locks her door first, keeping out the crowd:
will you yourself then make your sins notorious,
accusing and prosecuting your own crime?
Be wise, and learn at least to imitate chaste girls,
and let me believe you're good, though you are not.
Do what you do, but simply deny you ever did:
there's nothing wrong with public modesty.
There is a proper place for looseness: fill it up
with all voluptuousness, and banish shame;
but when you're done there, then put off all playfulness
and leave your indiscretions in your bed.
There, don't be ashamed to lay your gown aside
and press your thigh against a pressing thigh;
there take and give deep kisses with your crimson lips;
let love contrive a thousand ways of passion;
there let delighted words and moans come ceaselessly,
and make the mattress quiver with playful motion.
But put on with your clothes a face that's all discretion,
and let Shame disavow your shocking deeds.
Trick everyone, trick me: leave me in ignorance;
let me enjoy the life of a happy fool.
Why must I see so often notes received - and sent?
Why must I see two imprints on your bed,
or your hair disarrayed much more than sleep could do?
Why must I notice love bites on your neck?
You all but flaunt your indiscretions in my face.
Think of me, if not of your reputation.
I lose my mind, I die, when you confess you've sinned;
I break out in cold sweat from hand to foot;
I love you then, and hate you - in vain, since I must love you;
I wish then I were dead - and you were too!
I won't investigate or check whatever you try
to hide: I will be thankful to be deceived.
But even if I catch you in the very act
and look on your disgrace with my own eyes,
deny that I have seen what I have clearly seen,
and my eyes will agree with what you claim.
You'll win an easy prize from a man who wants to lose,
only remember to say, 'I didn't do it.'
Since you can gain your victory with one short phrase,
win on account of your judge, if not your case.

i

Then must I always bear your endless accusations?
They all prove false, but still I have to fight them.
If I happen to glance at the marble theater's topmost row,
you pick some girl in the crowd to moan about;
or if a beautiful woman looks at me wordlessly,
you charge she's using lovers' wordless signs.
If I compliment a girl, you try to tear out my hair;
if I criticize one, you think I've got something to hide.
If I look well, I love no one - not even you;
if I'm pale, you say that I'm pining for someone else.
I wish I really had committed some such sin:
punishment hurts less when you deserve it;
but as it is, your wild indictments at every turn
themselves forbid your wrath to have much weight.
Think of the little long-eared donkey's wretched lot:
continual beatings only make him stubborn.
Now look, here's another charge: Cypassis, your coiffeuse,
is cast at me for defiling her mistress's bed!
The gods forbid that I, even if I yearned to sin,
should find delight in a slave-girl's lowly lot!
What man, being free, would want a servile liaison,
or wish to embrace a body the whip has scarred?
And furthermore, the girl's your personal beautician,
and valued by you because of her skillful hands.
Is it likely that I'd approach such a trusted serving-maid?
What would I get, but rejection and exposure?
By Venus and by the bow of her swift boy I swear,
you'll never find me guilty of that crime.

ii

Cypassis, expert at dressing the hair in a thousand ways
(but you ought to arrange the tresses of goddesses only)
you that I've found quite polished in stolen ecstasy,
fit for your mistress's service, but fitter for mine,
whoever was it that told of our bodies joining together?
Where did Corinna learn of our affair?
Could I have blushed? Or slipped by a single word to give
some sign that has betrayed our furtive joys?
And what of it, if I argued that nobody could transgress
with a servant, except for a man who was out of his mind
The Thessalian burned with passion for lovely Briseis, a servant;
the Mycenean leader loved Apollo's slave.
I'm no greater man than Achilles, or the scion of Tantalus.
How can what's fine for kings be foul for me?
And yet, when your mistress turned her glowering eyes on you,
I saw a deep blush spread all over your face.
But how much more possessed I was, if you recall,
I swore my faith by Venus's great godhead!
(You, goddess, bid, I pray, the warm Southwind to blow
those innocent lies across the Carpathian sea.)
Now give me a sweet return for the favor I did you then,
by bedding with me, you dusky Cypassis, today.
Don't shake your head, you ingrate, pretending you're still afraid:
you can please one of your masters, and that's enough.
If you're silly enough to refuse, I'll confess all that we've done,
making myself the betrayer of my own crime,
and I'll tell your mistress how often we met, Cypassis, and where,
and how many times we did it, and how many ways!

I feel the caress of my own fingers
on my own neck as I place my collar
and think pityingly
of the kind women I have known.

I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss.
I am pushing knives through the hands
that created two into one.
Our hands do not bleed at this,
they lie still in their dishonor.
I am taking the boats of our beds
and swamping them, letting them cough on the sea
and choke on it and go down into nothing.
I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you ***** them out upon my face.
The Camp we directed?
I have gassed the campers.

Now I am alone with the dead,
flying off bridges,
hurling myself like a beer can into the wastebasket.
I am flying like a single red rose,
leaving a jet stream
of solitude
and yet I feel nothing,
though I fly and hurl,
my insides are empty
and my face is as blank as a wall.

Shall I call the funeral director?
He could put our two bodies into one pink casket,
those bodies from before,
and someone might send flowers,
and someone might come to mourn
and it would be in the obits,
and people would know that something died,
is no more, speaks no more, won't even
drive a car again and all of that.

When a life is over,
the one you were living for,
where do you go?

I'll work nights.
I'll dance in the city.
I'll wear red for a burning.
I'll look at the Charles very carefully,
weraing its long legs of neon.
And the cars will go by.
The cars will go by.
And there'll be no scream
from the lady in the red dress
dancing on her own Ellis Island,
who turns in circles,
dancing alone
as the cars go by.

Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

A stone can masquerade where no heart is
And virgins rise where lustful Venus lay:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

Our noble doctor claims the pain is his,
While stricken patients let him have his say;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Each virile bachelor dreads paralysis,
The old maid in the gable cries all day:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

The suave eternal serpents promise bliss
To mortal children longing to be gay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.