The Bread We Eat in Dreams
Page 49
to foretell my own obsolescence.
What place I, in the place where she lives?
What good my French cuffs
in that long desert?
When I kissed her I knew
she was not like me:
she knew none of the secret
houndstooth shames
that gentlemen know.
Her Galapagos-soul
had flashed past all that,
and she moved like dust on the plain.
A gentleman comes boldly,
when he comes.
He knocks at a little round door,
all etiquette, bred like a dog
to race after her, oh, to run,
while she speeds ahead in her uncatchable orbit,
spinning on her silver rod
always,
always,
so very like a living girl,
always,
always,
so very much faster than he.
I cannot go to Mars.
I am extinct there—
customs would never let me pass.
The days of maids yelping in chicken yards,
scared half to death of a hymen