For Edna St. Vincent Millay
On the seventieth anniversary of her death
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
And Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Fly-by-night and day by day,
Met upon an asteroid
In the starry sunless void.
Said he, in English, “I like your verse –
Ce n’est pas mal.”
“It could be worse.
I’m just a gal
Who can’t say Non
To life, to love, to poetry,
To wine, to women, and to men.
What’s your name? Tell me again.”
“I’m the Little Prince. And You?”
“I am the winner
(in nineteen hundred and twenty-three)
Of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
What do you think of that?” said she.
“Make me a sonnet, here and now,
Entwining our sainted names somehow.”
She tossed one off, just like that, and he
Said, “Oh, marry me, je vous en pris.”
“Not so fast, get off your knees.
You know I’ll do just as I please.
Let’s wait and see – let’s wait and see.”
And there they wait, eternally.