Valentine '96 Gray-headed Sentiment, heeled with decorous presence As befits a well-distinguished Cynic Though filled, once, with high speech in adolescence -- The most intractable idealist on earth! -- Now jacketed and jowled with few pretensions Toward the fashionable and photogenic, Enjoys a tired chuckle at my passing mention Of love's spring blossoming and heart's rebirth. "It has been," he allows, "quite some while, Since I imagined that a lady's smile Could quicken gnarled roots, or yet make thicker The rusty humours of the heart, Transmuting brine to ichor. And I have frowned for hours over lines on pages Composing verses which begin, 'Thou art . . .' And locate heaven in a face, a name -- But courtliness is out of fashion since the Middle Ages; The media, I think, can take the blame. "Old Sentiments like me were once reborn With relative frequency In times when men were far too innocent to scorn Life's offerings, and still too wise to leave Real hearts for broadcast images and Technicolor dreams But such today is our delinquency And such men as I become cynics when it seems The only protest left against ungrateful and naive Demands for ecstasy: before the great onslaught of lust We will raise a dour and skeptical defense For our outdated faith and innocence And don grey jackets and forbidding Homburgs, if we must." He pauses, smiling faintly, and adjusts his tie, But instantly returns from reverie To fix me with an earnest and a penetrating eye. "Learn this," he urges, "if you would now truly be a lover: Your wisdom and your innocent ideals must never be At odds, each seeking to supplant the other But guard them both from advertisement -- the modern world's dissembling, And with gratitude and wonder -- yes, and also fear and trembling, Take all that you are offered in its own due season And do not worry overmuch about its rhyme or reason." David DeBoe