Marriage Boxes

2 0 00

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