However artfully you transformed yourself
Into bitch, vixen, tigress,
I knew the woman behind.

Light as a bird now, you descend at dawn
From the poplar bough or ivy bunch
To peck my strawberries,

And have need indeed of an ample garden:
All my fruits, fountains, arbours, lawns
In fief to your glory.

You, most unmetaphorically you:
Call me a Catholic, so devout in faith
I joke of love, as Catholics do of God,
And scorn all exegesis.