There is no end but that coincidence

has a part in it, and that this is one

meaning of association.

I tried to tell you that

as you lay sleeping, drugged

by the air-conditioner, frozen

by the song of cicadas

and the hum of the machinery;

and I waited for you to awaken.

 

Dreamless you stir my conscience

blast me out of my reverie

like a distant tornado.

Silent, as if in a kind of movie,

your unconsciousness

moves toward me,

sweeps away the penumbra

of irrelevant objects and objections:

recollections of a Dorothy

going one way,

and of an Alice in another:

Oz, green as the Islands,

Kings and Queens in a clatter.

 

So now I too lie entranced,

cocooned in a sort of barbiturate

stupor. Battered

by a disfigurement of meaning,

I hold a timer in my hand, and pull

the pins. One after another. Is it a dream,

Or are you upon me, fiercely,

in a titanic explosion of feeling?

 

This environment is as stimulating

as it is said to be dangerous to health and to happiness.

Shutters keep out both light and the lightning;

Doors are oxymorons, iron maidens,

&/0r cool caretakers of togetherness.

 

That is the magic of a mixed bag

ingredients: It will be; it will be,

not as we permit,

but as our needs require.