During A Wet Spring, Long Ago

... she became famous for her wit, her brains and her ugliness.

Simple and frugal in her tastes, devout in thought

and manner of life, she married a former priest, who had

been freed from his vows, being unable to endure their rigor.

The cordials and elixirs habitually administered to him as a child

may well have developed the warring tastes for both stimulants

and opiates that almost ruined him. They were fanatically happy

for fifteen years, and when she passed on he wrote two lively,

amusing and sensible texts on domestic harmony. His diary entry

for what was likely the first evening they spent alone together

consists of a single line: "We watched meteors the entire night."

His servants said that after her death he was seen to kiss her

picture every morning upon waking, every night upon retiring

and at other times of day when he wrongly supposed he was alone.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved