So that was the beginning of "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling."
I remember I sent it to an old poetry
teacher of mine, an extremely conservative Victorian lady.
And I think this is why I lost the great work.
She wrote to me and said, if this
is what you're doing at the University of Chicago,
come back to Indianapolis.
So that was-- you see that, I've turn right around
and wrote the whole book, so on such subjects.
Let me see now.
I don't know, "Figures of Space,"
I'll read because it seems to give
a feeling of sleep and dream.
Like an opium dream perhaps.
I hasten to say that, I don't even take aspirin
for fear it might wake me up.
I seem to be permanently in a somnolent state,
and if I took a sleeping pill, I'd probably wake up.
So I'm always in that lovely state,
between figures in space.
Why did nature after such large expense,
declare the pact of her unaltered peace
and let the invaders softly enter in?
Sleep, sleep with no defense, but the tired sentry
sleeping at the outer wall of space.
So wind herself in fleece of that cold flame,
in the dream of space, in Jason's silver fleece.
Nocturnal rabbits sport above her breast.
Upon her vein, the white albino flower
sparkles a climate mild from pole to pole.
She is supine.
She fades from her own eyes, and fading
sees her image darkening.
There is no trust now in her blood colored cloud,
nor in the frigid flames of her bright sea.