A Toast to Failure

[lnhammer]

—for Judith Tarr

I thought it fun to mark your forty years
with Roman number games, and XL dares
me do it—take a word that has both letters,
and in a solemn natal verse’s fetters
(“Your fair day!”) somehow work it in off-hand,
as if its presence weren’t slyly planned.
A birthday challenge then ... but I can’t meet it.
My wit is weak, and by this task’s defeated—
for, plodding oxlike through the lexicon,
I cannot find a single blasted one.*
This failure is, I’m well aware, absurd,
and thus this froth: apologetic words
that wish for you a Fluxless year ahead,
with this advice—to let yourself be led
by how I write, and take my style for yours:
in joie de vivre, with insouciance, for your
informal (that is, tuxless) celebration,
relax, let go, and drink a deep libation.

* Alas! ex libris doesn’t count:
   Two words are not the right amount.

—? (mid-1990s)

1995 is a good guess, but again, I've lost the date.

---L.