There was one day a year we could relax and be our plastic selves, one day or, rather night, when we could let go, dismiss the bother of daily fossil faking, the rigid hoax of identity which rodded our aching backs and turned our ego covering to leather, one day in all the year to loose the tether and frolic in the meadows of their tricks.
What lettings go we had, what meltings of tension, what suspenseful waitings for the gatherings and the soft shrieking of dusk. And yet, despite the season's grotesque love, the little monsters may have wondered why we answered the bell in what they thought were masks.
[Published in "The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 15th Series" Copyright 1964, 1965, 1966 by Mercury Press, Inc.]
Treat
by Walter H. Kerr
There was one day a year we could relax
and be our plastic selves, one day or, rather
night, when we could let go, dismiss the bother
of daily fossil faking, the rigid hoax
of identity which rodded our aching backs
and turned our ego covering to leather,
one day in all the year to loose the tether
and frolic in the meadows of their tricks.
What lettings go we had, what meltings of
tension, what suspenseful waitings for the
gatherings and the soft shrieking of dusk.
And yet, despite the season's grotesque love,
the little monsters may have wondered why
we answered the bell in what they thought were masks.
[Published in "The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 15th Series" Copyright 1964, 1965, 1966 by Mercury Press, Inc.]