Sonnet to an old friend

(Roman Madly, ever-young Berlinian emigré painter and sometime Dunsterian, best known for his still life Cherries On a Wall)

399psi
penultimacy's apex


Roman, under alien guise excelling
Germanic for thy first eleven years
A merry can of germs at length rebelling
A country or a boy the Birth-marked rears.
Can Ada chronicle thy splintered tree?
Check republics, kingdoms: find it! Will
It ally with a thornclad shrubbery
Hungry for the dust of Europe’s mill?
.
Then mark the soft-striated trunk of Roman
And/or a twig reclining at its base
Slovenly a tick explodes the metaphor—
You crane your beastly neck to see its omen:
Belle jumping where no prince will give her chase
Nor wayward Latin swain has roamed before.
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