Original Voices from the Past

With Razor Keen

When Horace seeks to write an ode,
 He thus invokes the muse:
“Descend from Heaven; sing and we,
 Thy humble mouthpiece, use.”

But how can I, before my glass,
 With lather on my face,
Invite a modest muse to come,
 And these my quatrains grace?

A part of life, the shaving part,
 Has never yet been sung,
For poets with a false esteem
 To other themes have clung.

And yet I know that, while I scrape,
 Within my mind take place
Quite subtle changes; others, too,
 Can see them on my face.

As farmer with self-binder reaps
 His gladding, paying crop,
So joy I when my razor’s sharp
 And cuts without a stop.

And, if my razor’s dull and pulls,
 Intensity of thought
So floods me that desire to swear
 Is drowned, in deluge caught.

So joy is found and virtue trained
 In shaving—art thought mean,
Though art by which the shaver keeps
 His face and conscience clean.

Now while with keenest keel I cut
 A foamy, bearded sea,
Shampoo-like, smell of soap and bay
 Is wafted over me,

And faint, sweet scent of dead colonge
 That makes me think of girls,
Till musing, by the odors brought,
 My sail, attention, furls.

And now, in absent-minded mood,
 My thoughts are all aroam,
And far from being fastend on
 My whiskers, all afoam.

I fall to vaguely thinking on
 The puzzle we call life,
And how for petty ends we spend
 Our hear’s best blood in strife.

My razor slips! I feel a cut!
 My steel is stained with red!
My thought is proved, since I for nought
 But smoother face have bled.