As we shall be reminded by Friday’s Poem of the Day, T. S. Eliot named April “the cruellest month.” In today’s selection for this week of April poetry, Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), in fine, utterly characteristic bitter fettle, shows us not the cruelty of April, but a cruelty in April. In common-meter abab quatrains, she relates, as the title tells us, a “well-worn story,” in which a man appears as a figure of stone and metal, while the woman he doesn’t love bleeds her heart out through her gown, a humiliating “wet red stain.” Having spoiled her good dress, in the end she proceeds, equally humiliatingly, to “spoil a page with rhymes,” telling about it.  

A Well-Worn Story 
by Dorothy Parker 
 
In April, in April, 
My one love came along, 
And I ran the slope of my high hill 
To follow a thread of song. 

His eyes were hard as porphyry 
With looking on cruel lands; 
His voice went slipping over me 
Like terrible silver hands. 

Together we trod the secret lane 
And walked the muttering town. 
I wore my heart like a wet, red stain 
On the breast of a velvet gown. 

In April, in April, 
My love went whistling by, 
And I stumbled here to my high hill 
Along the way of a lie. 

Now what should I do in this place 
But sit and count the chimes, 
And splash cold water on my face 
And spoil a page with rhymes.  

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.