Nobody's Heart

The darklashed eyes half opened,
the port-red lips half shut,
the seal of the letter broken,
the long-held secret out,

she turns with a sad pirouette,
and for a last second fancies
a clutch of fine-chinned silhouettes
of tophatted old-moneyed dandies.

So somebody thinks she's something,
Who's thinking of her as he slinks
in the shadows across the road, mumbling
and stumbling along as he thinks

that if Helen's face set off a thousand
trim-sailed fire-fighting ships,
then she'd wake the dead to carouse &
raise hell with the swell of her hips.

But her cold heart is hard and her sights
are set on the gold,
and a word's worth to her is a half-penny
sadly neglected;

and a scribbler's art is a trifle,
a rhyme is a tale twice-told,
and the name that she saw was the one
that was least expected.

 Nobody's heart gets broken
over and over again;
over and over again.

So now she knows it, he mentions
off-handedly in his own ear;
but it was with the best of intentions
that he'd made his affections clear.

Of course she was disappointed,
That Cupid's anointed dart
was once again errantly pointed
at some low-born nobody's heart.