The thin man down the hall wears black cashmere
And loafers with sad tassles.

He tells women that theory will kill you
And wreck your sister’s wedding.

Without the heat and the leaves changing so fast
The sackers of cities

Can only blame a lack of pale lace
And the ideology of modernism

For pearls turning inward out of season
Across our own V-neck sweaters

And a blue dowry lifted from
A lean hermeneutic

While the borrowed tux with tails across the hall
Fills his father’s shoes