to you

(who did not mind fern leaves
on your cupful of late afternoon tea
on a rainy september day)

~~~~~

one brown-faced madonna in her room
filled with the comforts
of the damned
insists:
this is something stronger than both of us.

she calls the canteen
requests for lunch--delivered, please--purringly
flicks on a button
to watch an afternoon show
on television,
searches for a book
or a magazine
from the shelves to her left,
writes a memorandum:
to r (who dared one morning
to bawl her out
for an ad that did not come out)
not through any fault of mine, she whispers.

while i labor
insignificant
in a noisy bustling newsroom
filled with impersonal shadows
laughing, chatting, typing
i know not what they do
only what they affect to do.

mea culpa,
i strike my breast: thrice, i think

tell me:
shall i plant vegetables?

___________

24.6.70

9.35 p.m.