With apologies to Robert Browning

My Last Duchess

There she stands as if alive.
--Robert Browning

My last duchess hangs alone in cyberspace.
Megabytes and gigabytes dissemble her face
yet her countenance beams a smile too kind
when drawn forth to the monitor of my mind.
Would that an artist’s hand had created this alone
so that her image and her memory were my own
and not for anyone who gave her a passing glance
who she deigned to engage in her ritual dance
blithely slipping and spinning away with youthful joy
exchanging her suitor, aging and gray, for today’s boy.
Mistake me not, dear sir, for she did smile for me,
and even now I hold her memory with certain glee.
Though from my midnight embraces she often fled,
I thought all would lie well once upon our marriage bed.
Sharp intellect, rapier wit, and clever conversation
could not erase the image of impotent prostration
that contrasted so sharply with memories of lovers
past and passion spent in the arms of ghostly others.
The once-wild stallion, limping home at break of day,
cannot compete with the lusty reveries of yesterday.
Let me clear the screen of her before we speak again,
I see you lingering upon her features as did all men
wishing you could have beheld her in her living state.
Vex me not, my friend, lest you end up sharing her fate.
Come now, surely you saw that all was said in merry jest.
Let’s go out and stake a new maiden above all the rest.