Page 49 of The Bread We Eat in Dreams

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