Marriage Boxes
Oh God
That men and women
having undertaken to vanquish one another
should be allowed
to shut themselves up
in hot boxes
and breed
Spirits of prey
ceaselessly
on the watch
in their cruel privacy
Seizing upon occasion
for crippling the personal
to test the law of the craftiest for survival
with that innate will to emerge victorious
present in every human enterprise
until at last the vanquished mate
dies
of modification
The days
of the Penfolds and the Exodi
in their respective roles
drip into years
with that perilous
multiplication of petty shocks
so much advertised
against
by the American manufacturers
of indiaвБ†вАФrubber soles
To the Penfolds
Culture has thrown
its bone
of contention
for the passions to chew on
вАФso that they shall not howl and biteвБ†вАФ
Each one is in the right
according to a different school of accepted philosophy
and eventually
they subside
into the preвБ†вАФpolemical silence
of creation
Under the virginia creeper
creeping over
the ExodusвАЩ
home
the shocks of
intimate impact
of the instinctive
murderer and pamperer
of Jesus
rattle its sockets
Exodus has nothing but his pockets
to impress
his rabid rose
of the hedges
while for her redress
she can flaunt the whole of England in his foreign face
It would please us
to look upon this face of Exodus
for it is exceeding beautiful
but this means nothing to the undutiful
woman
she being
exceedingвБ†вАФ
ly
short sighted
All forms are the same nought to her
only she had gathered from her literature
that men ought to be fair
and as all women
who have not got the world to choose from
marry
in an hallucinatory
conviction
that the best man they can get
will yet
redye his soul in the matrimonial
vats
of constant suasion
to the requisite tintвБ†вАФ
She suffered a savage irritation
that this jew
should not invest himself automatically
with her prejudices of a superior
insulation
at the merest hintвБ†вАФ