DIAPHENIA, drunk with sleep,
Drunk with pleasure, drunk with fatigue,
Feels her Corydon’s fingers creep—
Ring-finger, middle finger, index, thumb—
Strummingly over the smooth sleek drum
Of her thorax.
Meanwhile Händel’s Gigue
Turns in Corydon’s absent mind
To Yakka-Hoola.
She can find
No difference in the thrilling touch
Of one who, now, in everything
Is God-like. “Was there ever such
Passion as ours?”
His pianoing
Gives place to simple arithmetic’s
Simplest constatations:—six
Letters in Gneiss and three in Gnu:
Luncheon to-day cost three and two;
In a year—he couldn’t calculate
Three-sixty-five times thirty-eight,
Figuring with printless fingers on
Her living parchment.
“Corydon!
I faint, faint, faint at your dear touch.
Say, is it possible . . . to love too much?”