Casanova's Love Letters (Poetry)

They wouldn’t work today,
Those rambling excesses of passion.
No modern woman would swallow any of it.

All words. Just words. From a man who
Hadn’t anything better to think about;
Nothing else to say.

So he thought about her. And that preoccupation’s new?
It’s as old as time, that niggle worming deep,
The wanting what the world says we can’t have.

So he wrote to her. Reams on how he felt
And how he had to satisfy his hunger, sate desire
Any way he could. Take any maid
Or willing matron to his lonely bed
As substitute (a poor one) none
Could compare. But we take that as read.

He used them gently, fondly, with regard
For womanhood. He wasn’t quite the cad
Historians (all men) would make him out.
He loved them in his way, adored them
Fleetingly and, on balance, it was hard
To say who pleasured who.

And during sexual play, good manners prompted
Pretty murmurings for kindness sake,
So he was chivalrous aloud but kept his true passion quiet,
And nursed it into poetry on nights
Spent alone and writing in purple ink
On thick sheets of yellow vellum.

So out it poured: the useless longing of obsessive,
Thwarted love that was forever doomed,
Undiluted, heady with a tender lust.

Extravagant with promises, ridiculous and
Madman-crazy in his pain, he ravished her on the page,
Sucked her memory dry and chewed her bones.

Should that still be thought romantic? Tastes have changed.
Too extreme. Today, she’d freak out. Judge him strange
And tell him to get over it.
                                Or take out a restraining order.