happy birthday, Few

To celebrate fewthistle's birthday, a poem about that delicious bitch who toys with us both:

When at night I wait for her to come,
Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
With the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
She stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: "And were you Dante's guide,
Dictating the Inferno?" She answers: "Yes."

~"Muse," Anna Akhmatova (trans. D.M. Thomas)