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to foretell my own obsolescence.

What place I, in the place where she lives?

What good my French cuffs

in that long desert?

When I kissed her I knew

she was not like me:

she knew none of the secret

houndstooth shames

that gentlemen know.

Her Galapagos-soul

had flashed past all that,

and she moved like dust on the plain.

A gentleman comes boldly,

when he comes.

He knocks at a little round door,

all etiquette, bred like a dog

to race after her, oh, to run,

while she speeds ahead in her uncatchable orbit,

spinning on her silver rod

always,

always,

so very like a living girl,

always,

always,

so very much faster than he.

I cannot go to Mars.

I am extinct there—

customs would never let me pass.

The days of maids yelping in chicken yards,

scared half to death of a hymen