So you left without a word.

I was totally unheard.

I wept aloud to setting sun.

For you, who can love no one.

Yes, you are gorgeous, grand, and great,

To fools who gather at your gate.

The mindless drones who shout your name,

Enslaved by mistress of the game.

Yet, thinking in another hue,

Is loving twice like loving new?

Can Aphrodite’s magic spell

Create a heaven out of hell?

That rancid fat and tainted meat,

A meal gone bad in summer heat.

That tainted meat and rancid fat,

The place my second mind is at.

Still, I take heart and try anew,

And leave the place where vultures flew.

One teardrop falling from my eye,

At dusk, on the fourth of July.

end

Mr. E. Bates is a poet who likens the quest for love to a foxhunt, in which it is the chase and not the kill that appeals.