Sometimes, watching on television
My favorite serial,
A Sad
H
e.att .at the Supermarket:
The Story of a Woman Who
Had
Everything,
>
I look at my wife--
And see her; and remember, always with the same surprise,
"Why, you are beautiful." And beauty
is
a good,
It makes us desire it. When, sometimes, I see
this
desire
In some wife's eyes, some husband's eyes,
I think of the God-Fish in a nightmare
I had once: like giants in brown space-suits
But like fish, also, they went upright through the streets
And were useless to struggle with, but, struggled with,
Showed me a story that, they said, was the story
Of the Sleeping Beauty. It was the old story
But ended differently': when the Prince kissed her on the lips '
She wiped her lips,
And with a little
moue-in
the dream, a little mouse–
Tumed over and went back to sleep.
I woke, and went to tell my wife the story:
And had she not resembled
My mother as she slept, I had done it.
She resembled a recurrent
Scene from my childhood,
A scene called Mother Has Fainted.
Mother's body
Was larger, now it no longer moved;
Breathed, somehow, as if it no longer breathed.
Her face no longer smiled at us
Or frowned at us-did anything to us.
Her face was queerly flushed ' '
Or else queerly pale; I am no 'longer certain.
That it was queer I 'am certain.
