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The Costume Party at the Pleasure House

A blue jester cartwheels through the silken labyrinth.
A bespectacled young man ogles the otherworldly pudenda.
A magician in tattered tails puffs on the pipes
of seventeenth-century fusiliers
brandishing silver-plated goblets filled with crimson.
Goats and other bleaters from minor kingdoms
push chesspieces across the floor with their chinhairs.
The nubility mingle with the invited.
A clock strikes without warning. It is a night to be rued.
Outside, willows bend charismatically.