INDECENCY

                 Just as i, scaling my seventieth year's peak, wanted
          That woman, that bursting Radica, that princess turned queen-
          Mother, that legendary near-mythical Queen Mona,
          what i now don’t want is to serve you, reader, one more dish
          Of guys looking at chicks (which mon semblable Godard proposed
          As one reading of flics – and, no doubt, of much Western art –
          Another being his unconsolingly catholic
          Death in action – the kind of unflinching clarté the French
          – Qui d’autres?, absolument, leur terroir va sans dire, sans doute –
          Excel in)

          My invaluable ‘sphinx without a secret’;   my dime-
          a-dozen muse:   i found her beauty as impossible
          To bear as its power-mode must have been for her colleagues.
          How had Stew undermined and overcome that explosive
          Hurdle – in himself?     Could this old man, no Woody Allen,
          Hope to cope?    Not a hope in hell.

                                             *

             You may say that all i am saying is that, at my age,
          Passion and vision should meet as cousins kissing only,
          Each too retardedly delusional to risk spawning
          That most moronic oxymoron, passionate vision.

          Yet hope :   four-letter word.   With which others did i convince
          Radica to come with me for coffee?   – at Ratsmoolahs,
          The nearby ‘Ethiopian’ café –  Oh, she laughed, one
          Of mine!   Favourites or properties? i joked.   Both of course!

           (from “fatima solagua arterra’s nudes” by Brian Chan)