Bent

By Louie Crew

Their typing pecks in titillations there,

over the lilac and the apple blossoms.

This giddy, strange dirge heralds your abrupt

departure. Little can sweaty, fate-like

amanuenses, stuck for a hot day's

work in the country, guess their horrible

perverse, bleak service, tapping you away

as black ink striking white, official sheets,

mingling their cheap perfume with monastic

stench

to suffocate the spring! “Funereal!

It's not right! You are crazy!” I would

shout

at them; but they would only fart or wink,

startled by my accusing madness. Hence,

I stand a master peering at the page

recorded, hiding my malevolence

with actor's smile.

Their private word

is queer;

their public euphemism, “Acts against

nature.” But what can they in wisdom know

of Nature? “Your behavior's queer – no,

damned

unnatural!” I almost shout; but stop,

because I cannot be their teacher. No!

How like the spring you've come to free me

to know a summer's secret joy while you,

uprooted thus, must go condemned away.

They would not understand. Their dirge

resumes.

I walk away.

Louie Crew is a writer and a well-known collector and disseminator of statistics and little-known facts about the Anglican Communion, which may be found on his website . He writes a regular online column for The Witness. Louie may be reached by email at lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu .