Oh! That?

What?...
(Shakespeare)

Essays? -Nonsense, I have not essayed!
A study? -I'm lazy, Ive never pilfered around.
A volume? -Too brochure-like to be bound...
Copy? -For that, alas, you don't get paid!

A poem? -Thanks, but I have hocked my lyre.
A book? -. . . A book, tha?'s something to be read!...
Loose sheets? -No, thank God, it's tight-sewn and entire!
Album? -Not blank, but it lacks a coherent thread.

Rhymed ends? -By which end?. . . And it's little use!
An opus? -It's not polished and polished again.
Songs-d just love that, my little Muse! ...
Pastimer-You think it's mere amusement, then?

Verses?. . . a fux of verse?.. No, it's jerky, see.
-Ah, you've been chasing Originality?...
-No... she's an odd hussy,-from the streets-it's
odd, when you proposition her, she beats it.

Is it pure cbic? -And who'd teach me that game?
-Does it soar? Or sink convulsed? -Neither flight nor falI!
-A thing for the ashcan?... Or for a house of ill fame.
-The retormatory, even? -Not at all!

-Good, it's not classic? -It is barely French!
-Amateur? -Do lI suggest success?
-Old-fashioned? -Well, not forty years off the bench...
-New style? -With years, one remedies that vice.

... THAT is naively just an impudent pose;
it is or it isn't that: all or nothing, say.
-A masterpiece?-Maybe; I've never made one of those.
-Is it in the style of the Hurons, of Gagne, or Musset?

-It's like. . . I've signed my humble nom d'auteur,
and my child has no title that's a lie.
lt may be right, or wrong: a hit-or-miss try...
Art has never met me. And I don't know Her.

Central police station, May 20, 1873