To Mary After reading Frankenstein But you now you with your Prometheus genre & its idiot spark with the big heart you drew back the veil of God exposing yourself to the very face easing your premature play of line & sag so that to our harsh perceptions you seemed made new while claiming only metamorphosis Through days confused with lilies & frustration for lack of the murder he wandered a lesser Oedipus neither king nor prince & told me of his loneliness Marking the crude tracks wrapped round his wrists & the dull yellow of his eyes like the pages of aged books his loneliness infected me so that I understood him at last The need of a bride I admitted to be inescapable as I turned away from the fire into the dark made bitter by leaving & gazing at the hunch of back haloed though underlit I knew Mary it would have been you Fl x BL DE