The Ceroc Years - Number Eight

The Prime of the Mournful Ceroqueur

It is a mournful Ceroqueur,
And he asketh one of three …
“By thy sweat-stained shirt and stamm’ring speech,
Now wherefore ask’st thou me?

Yon dark-eyed man doth stand there yet,
And I am next in line;
The lights are low, the music slow:
Pray’st, this time he’ll be mine.”

He grasps her in his clammy hand,
“Once at a dance”, quoth he.
“Avaunt! Unhand me, squalid wretch!”
Lief would her hand shake free.

He stuns her with his dreadful breath -
The woman thus struck dumb,
Left wimp’ring as a child forlorn:
He’d trapp’d her ’neath his thumb.

The woman fell into a chair:
She lists but cannot stir;
And thus spake on that doleful man,
The drunken ceroqueur.

“The rock band thrill’d, the singer trill’d,
Trippingly did I dance
Around that Hall one New Year’s Eve,
’Till I caught beauty’s glance.

At length this vision danced with me;
My mind and senses reel’d.
She held, forsooth, my heart in thrall,
And so my fate was sealed.

I dream’d a dream I ne’er had dreamt;
She hath my soul beguiled:
Her legs are long, her figure sleek,
I yearned for Faery’s child.

’Twas thus I met my paramour,
And ere the clocks struck ten,
A boon I pray’d of this fair maid,
‘Wilt thou see me again?”

“What ails thee, mournful ceroqueur,
How came’st thou to this plight?”
“My love was spurn’d; the lady turn’d
And fled into the night.”