Nail Chiodo

The time was overripe, long gone to seed,
For Time to be called “Destroyer” to its face:
More than Lud ever hoped for or dreamed
Had been tendered him on a golden plate
Only to be promptly cleared away and forthwith replaced
With other rare morsels of blending taste
Lent him new charge—till, in the end, he could but scream
“O God—enough of love—I am satiate!”
To retire at thirty (having made millions of bucks)
Had been the dream of peasants in his generation;
To do so (still penniless but) after thousands of fucks
Was more in line with the aristocratic station
Will not add to mankind’s cahiers de doléances¹.
So it was that Lud honestly came to believe
He could do without yet another good woman,
Live henceforth in a virile spirit of chastity
And come to terms (finally) with his own soliton².
Which indeed is the way it might all have worked out
Had it not been for the wild type of Kant’s imperative³,
With all of its totally and in no way gratuitous clout,
Which placidly suggested that a soul found attractive,
And patently in need of attention, should not—
If at all possibile—be left unattended:
With Lesley, as with most any girl seen by chance at a party,
That meant hitting the dance floor and singling her out.
And that is, in fact, what Lud proceeded to do
With the zen-like precision of one who has nothing to gain
And nothing to lose; for he did not, most assuredly,
Have her in mind for himself when he made his move.
Our young Casanova plans on pimping for friends,
To keep busy after early retirement;
The idea leaps at him, spurred by the moment:
A way not to waste the expertise he’s acquired
In luring and baiting curious specimens;
An ethical human-resource investment;
A novel sort of spiritual militancy even,
As a politically-correct Saviour might have ordained
Somewhere along the lines of “Follow me
And I’ll make you a fisher of women.”⁴
While he and Lesley boogied away,
Lud worked out the whole deontology;
The morrow was to be just another day
In which he would turn her over to Charly;
And at close of evening, in front of her doorstep,
A fortiori⁵ no kiss was exchanged.
The sincerity of our self-styled match-maker
Can hardly be matter for doubt;
But one can’t really blame Charly either
For wondering what Lud’s plan was about:
A merchant by trade and formation,
He was naturally suspicious of any donation,
Especially if it consisted in a young lady
Hot as plutonium, but perhaps just as shady.
So he forewent trying his chances with her,
Left his pal Lud to enjoy his droit du seigneur⁶
And manage his own portfolio of futures.
That Lud thence returned upon his decision
Never again to get amorous with someone
And, overcome by compassion
For his rejected offering,
Fell for Lesley like a plump persimmon
In no way means he had succumbed
To exhuming old velleities and expectations:
Henceforth he might still love, yes, but all the while
Expecting nothing in return; it would take patience
Perseverance selfless dedication, a style
Almost imperceptible because utterly uncommon,
Paradoxical fulfillment of the self-images
Of the age⁷. That the time had come to be less wanton
Was also a matter of simple arithmetic,
Really, though of a beauty so intrinsic
As to solve a whole variety of conundrums.
To wit:

1 / 7 = 0 . 1 4 2 8 5 7
2 / 7 = 0 . 2 8 5 7 1 4
3 / 7 = 0 . 4 2 8 5 7 1
4 / 7 = 0 . 5 7 1 4 2 8
5 / 7 = 0 . 7 1 4 2 8 5
6 / 7 = 0 . 8 5 7 1 4 2

—a series of homologous, infinite expansions
(Known as Sukumar’s Symphony of Numbers⁸
After the gentle avatar who composed it)
Which discompose the veil of the seventh digit
Just that bit that’s needed to reveal its wonders.
Point is, Lesley became Lud’s seventh lover
And, as these playful figures prove,
Harmony will be inherent in a heart that’s true
When it gets divided into seven parts.
With her, Lud reached his seventh heaven;
Their love was perfected, if e’er love has been.
But after only a few months in which he
Had showered her with all manner of attention,
Lesley came down with an itch to move on
And pursue her own prurient vocation.
Lud, too, felt a plummeting tension,
A surging sense of futility and ennui—
Not unlike that of God the seventh day of creation⁹.
After taking her leave of him with due reverence,
She promptly forded the shallows of prescience
And soused in the find that she was the kind
Of person who is of like gender and mind
In questions of sexual preference.
Soon she became a gallant natural force,
Defender of the oppressed and a terror in the Courts;
And Lud could not but feel proud in the end,
As he had been her lover, that he still was her friend.