Let us go, Oedipus, let me walk you
'Twixt towers reaching to heaven,
Where women are charged to be patient and perfect.
You will not stay upon your leash.

We walk through Mandalay, not Paris,
Where the women have no face.
'Tis but a siren of emergency
That sings to me.

What worth I am to you, Oedipus,
What worth am I to them?
When the footman holds my coat, and snickers,
What worth am I to them?

Every man is a piece of the continent!
She may love me for the dangers I have passed,
And I her that she did pity them,
But she cannot, now and forever.

And while the sun excludes me,
I am not them and they not I,
And the waters do not glisten,
She is their chattel and not mine.

I gaze upon her ornate face and sing,
Her eyes are pools of wonder that see me, and swing away.

I am older, I have sense,
Like Oedipus my King,
But when I see her ornate face
I very nearly sing.

After many lonely nights
In shirtsleeves and not silk,
I went to her, and said:
Here, take this silver, for my milk.

And she may have loved me once
But for my thought and sense,
I'm but a bumblebee today -
I left at some expense.