again, if it had not been for the odd crystals,
powders, grains, the uncut
gems and a thousand gorgeous trifles poured
for the sake of "aura,"
some burnt, some merely glowing lilf.e embers
around us where we lounged
m that silly mummy-case of an apartment–
another hour there and I
should have died in the odor of Orient
as some are said to die
in the odor of sanctity. Did
I
say as much?
I must have-the remark
made his eyebrows play like summer lightning
up around his hairline
(bald as an egg, but he has a hairline still).
Checkmate! I've learned
it
means
Shah mat:
the king is dead. Such artifice
was bound to spring a leak-
out cold, bequeathing me a carcass quite
uninhabitable ...
My resistances, as I have called them, were
no more than submissions
to Animal, Vegetable, Mineral Realms–
flower, dog, druggery.
I wonder how to escape, were he to press
new designs that must be
obscene to be believed? Trust inertia
over the intellect
I cannot muster... At least it makes a tale,
a sort of haphazard
Scheherazade. And if we were never amazed,
there would be no stories
to tell about us. Believe in the mystery
of Woman: it gives her one.
