A Lover’s Complaint

After William Shakespeare

Art will misread humanity

Only to write her a love letter

Six years later, declaring his confusion

For what is good is not always beautiful

Though what we make beautiful is often

Good by virtue of our own excesses

Nature is more lovely than our gibes

Art will favor humanity

Until life shows her true face

An outcast fog of morn

Inebriated with shame and

Helpless at his door

Art will castigate love

Until love bears her labor as a sin

All too willing to follow, like a

Wayward wolf who has lost

The scent of his tribe

But art will not concede

Until proven wrong by reason

Or defeated by his own vanity

For there’s his greatest weakness

Those who follow his will

Find the long path home

To themselves, unwillingly

Forced to confront the truth

Until it perches, like a god

Upon their left shoulders

No longer striving to conceal

What is false from ugly

How little time is left for real work

My love

If you could only read these words