Cave Canem by Edna St. Vincent Millay — Read

Importuned through the mails, accosted over the telephone, / overtaken by running footsteps, caught by the sleeve, the / servant of strangers,

While amidst the haste and confusion lover and friend quietly / step into the unreachable past,

I throw bright time to chickens in an untidy yard.

Through foul timidity, through a gross indisposition to excite / the ill-will of even the most negligible,

Disliking voices raised in anger, faces with no love in them, / I avoid the looming visitor, / Flee him adroitly around corners, / Hating him, wishing him well;

Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise / true:

That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied; And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the / sonnet cools

Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies

As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house   I was a child.

Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt, / There may be. But not enough to keep a bird alive.

There is a flaw amounting to a fissure

In such behaviour.