Quote of Day: Sex at the End of the Victorian Era - Ricochet.com

Posted by parceline on

Saturday, September 7, 2019

“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” — Andy Warhol

“For most people, the end of an era is usually good riddance, but there are always those who don’t want it to happen.” — Anonymous

I wrote the poem below about 50 years ago. I’m telling you that because it may otherwise seem a bit creepy for an 81-year-old to be writing a poem about sex. Old men ought to confine their posts to mawkish reminiscences about the good ol’ days, and of course screeds against young people and modern ways of doing things.

But I was intrigued to see what I could do with that 50-year-old poem. So I sat down and reworked it to sharpen the diction, improve the rhythm, and add a few more poetic devices. (These are not going to be enough to please Arahant, Ricochet’s poetic maven, because he loves poetic forms more than he loves his cat.)

Despite my work on it, the theme of the poem, centered in the last few lines, remained as cryptic as it was 50 years ago. So I looked for a quote to help untangle that theme. I couldn’t find one that worked, so I faked one (the second quote above, the “anonymous” one). It’s close to a real quote, I think, but I can’t recall the exact words of the original, and Google can’t help me. Perhaps the very literary Mrs. She can help me here. She, do the words after the comma bring any poem to mind? I have a feeling they come from Yeats.

Criminently, maybe I’d better not admit to all that. Vectorman, the czar of the Quote of the Day feature on Ricochet, may ban me from future Quotes of the Day if he finds out that one of my two quotes is a fake. So mum’s the word, Ricocheters. You don’t think he reads these things, do you?

I’m not a natural poet; I’m an essayist by nature. But with a lot of persistence, I can force words (I’m very fond of words) into the semblance of a poem. I like to write poetry occasionally because poetry invites endless editing, a process that gives me endless satisfaction. At any rate, here’s my poem.

Sex at the End of the Victorian Era

Linen and lace,
folds and flesh,
troubled the mind of Eban Trapp.
A novel unopened lay in his lap.

Frock-coated in wool,
Eban squirmed and fidgeted
in his easy chair while
behind closed door, Lilith
lay sleepy, immersed to her chin,
in bath water so hot
it pinkened her skin.

At long last, she emerged,
toothsome and sweet,
swathed in layers of cotton and silk,
a linen nightcap on her head.
Rosewater scented, the soft
and luscious Lilith came to bed.

Now in the grip of a
terrible passion in the gloom
of a high-ceilinged gilt bedroom,
Eban was obliged by the dark
to blindly peel
the darling Lilith’s
nightcap and socks
knickers and smocks,
by hot touch and feel.

Until there under thick eiderdown,
among the tangled folds,
the warm touch of skin
was so secret, so sweet,
so near to sin,
that when Victoria
the good queen died,
there were some men like Eban
who cried, cried.

Published in General

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Labels: Quotes of the day

Thanks for reading Quote of Day: Sex at the End of the Victorian Era - Ricochet.com. Please share...!