"Juan's Song" by Louise Bogan

Juan’s Song

When beauty breaks and falls asunder   

I feel no grief for it, but wonder.

When love, like a frail shell, lies broken,   

I keep no chip of it for token.

I never had a man for friend

Who did not know that love must end.   

I never had a girl for lover

Who could discern when love was over.   

What the wise doubt, the fool believes—

Who is it, then, that love deceives?

Source of the text – Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.

TJB: Mostly trochaic, somewhat misogynist: epigrams of a sex addict, in the parlance of our times. Answer to the rhetorical question? Everyone.