Libertine with the lovely face, bawdy
batterer of Charles II in verse, your
drunken stint with the Merry Gang, shoddy
trampling of Bess in a marriage obscure
as ghosts, pin-prick affairs with actresses
on the London stage flopping your flagrant
body on syphilis-stained mattresses—
all made you flee king’s court, hide as vagrant
Doctor Bendo, then crutch to the Lords’ house—
rotted nose capped with silver—your prelude
to dying at the same age as Jesus.
Strange how such a life so debauched and crude
could flower with poems of truth and flair,
bring praise from Hazlitt, Goethe, and Voltaire.
Roger Armbrust
November 9, 2007
