Choices
A poem
Pretty girl, with a smile most becoming,
Who’s becoming more in the springtime’s humming —
That of birds which nest in blooming trees,
And of cats who purr around one’s knees,
And of smaller kids playing “Mummy,”
Who rub rubber babies against their tummies.
What will you do when they see your beauty,
When they smile your way and call you “cutie”?
Is it what you wanted, to be treated like that?
A thing that’s cute, just like that cat,
Or the babies, or the birds, which will grow and die,
Like all those pretty things which dwindle in time.
Pretty and cute, and polite and meek,
Ladies don’t fight,
They don’t even speak,
Least their pretty pink faces turn blue, like the birds,
And their words held at ransom for something absurd.
To speak and be heard, or adored by many —
You can’t have both;
But wait too long,
And you won’t have any.
