For Una, When She Feels Cross
Darling, if you say “a spider rose up and bit me,” I will hit you again.
Didn’t we learn to embellish?
You should say, “I have spotted a dwarf on the plain.
This dwarf–he is pleading with his lady. She has stopped at a well to pray.”
(and if it is a clear night
if it is day and night
night and day)
Darling, if I say “there was a crease in the pinwheel of the rose,”
you must correct me. “It was never there”–or else, “it was always there.”
And the little analysts who wounded me, “they were bad ponies.”
And then it might remind you of Hieronymus Bosch playing a harp,
because I will say, “there is a factory of sylphs.”
And then we will bite our shirts.
And soon there will be an appearance of little David, playing before Saul,
and you will know that we are stuck in an allegory
[and one that ends bitterly].
You will receive your yellow napkin, and the plinth of my acorn.
And the planets will photograph us.
And it being the next most unwise thing, we will open a new book–
the one labelled Beyond all Possible Pleasure,
the one labelled Most Whole and Difficult Meaning.