Ballad of Star-Crossed Lovers

Of lovers young and bold, belying all
Bid Rosaline her waylaid curtain call
Surviving Romeo (the pundits’ guess)
Is evidently common, more or less,
And solely plays to the sold out crowds of none;
Her stardom will start up when she’s said and done.

An Uzbek girl living in a Turkmen land
Crossed subtle lines and took a local hand—
No parents there to bless (or likely curse)
His serenade, her saraband made worse—
Too lithe for pomegranate plans to purely grow: 
They lay under shelter of dreams indigo.

A devil cut in and dangled scholarship
To Romeo, though Rose the better fit:
A solitary chance to up and flee
This figured Central Asian misery
The sandy, stranded shell of the Soviet Man:
His orphans, his widow, his catch as catch can.

So Rose worked for his win, pour’d over his books 
Estranged herself from her belly dance looks
Which hampered not his cause, the board agreed 
With all that he had, gallop this fair steed
Clear to America, where he never replied
To rosewater letters and dances that died.

A second, first sight Jule took him alive:
Their story fades, but Rosaline, now twenty five, 
Keeps dancing dour just to pay the rent,
Feigns efforts brave to fend off Uzbek men;
She will incinerate herself (statistics claim)
And love nothing more than that indigo flame.

Of lovers young and bold, belying all
Bid Rosaline her waylaid curtain call.