I

You are my Sweetheart; 
Sang the tin can 
I was sitting on a truck 
As it rolled along 
You are my Truck
Sang my Sweetheart 
Somehow it was menacing 
An ominous song 
I hardly knew what to say I went into the truck 
It was amazing 
That autumn afternoon, when every affection came unsought 
As from an unstoppered lute and a glass of campari 
Was downed from a shimmering glass and quickly as if nothing 
Could harm the eternal beaver any more. But a policeman of high reflection 
Suddenly stood up for the traffic crossings' protection 
And were we sad, lost in thought at our newfound abortionlessness 
In stages, because of a green kerchief stuck in your pocket 
As one asks What's the difference between that and a handkerchief? and 
Between each stop and its parenthesis? Let's assume we have too much 
And pound on the marble table top. It has always gone best that way 
Yet you're thinking (I think) “Yet the hand falls off 
And the streets of Paris will continue to go every which way. 
No, in spite of your palaver 
And a summertime gift for describing the rose 
You will have to take me into another valley 
Where reality is not affliction.” Or if you did not think that all at once 
Toward that our thoughts have been gathering. Whose omnibus is that parked outside the S. S. Rose
With a Himalayan flagboy in the window of the car 
Scratching his initials A.H., A.H., as the winter evening dies 
And turns into a springtime fogbound morning? I was sleeping in the hay 
When we awoke. One could just barely make out the sky. A truck raced past. 
Then I realized where we were. It was potato season. And, Spiff! this season was to be our last 
Before we dangled before tomatoes, hard red ones and yellow yummy 
Tomatoes and huge hard pink ones which were brighter than the nose 
Of Snow White in Walt Disney's fiction. I am going into slaveland 
To help these tomatoes get free, but they come thumping 
After. “Wait for us! Wait! You will see! It is impossible to serve us unless we are there!”
And the tomatoes turned into apples. I was wide awake. The cook said, “You are my Sweetheart.”
And a band played “The Abortion of the Sleeper may be the Swan Song of the Sheep-Man's Heart.”

2

Into this valley my sweetheart came
The tomatoes were hard as her nose
She was available exactly
Five minutes every aftemoon
Then she took Snow White
Into the kidney parlor
She said "Snow White, be an actress!"
And Snow White implored the yellow movies
To be more reasonable about Al Capp
"He's a swell guy"
We know we know 
But he's not purple anymore
A large picture flew through the sky
My Sweetheart put on it
"I am the Capostranni of the Rose"
And William Butler Yeats died
When Auden wrote the poem
About the deftness of the steamship
Plying through the harbor
Is my Sweetheart's nose.

 

3

Meanwhile Snow White and her boyfriend 
Have gone up into the mountains. 
It is amazing what they will do for a game of bingo! 
No! That is not what they are doing. Look! 
They are making love! I didn’t know that was allowed in the movies 
In this country! But that must be what they are doing! 
She is lying beneath him and every time his body rose 
I saw her fingerprints gripping the dust hke the U.S.S. Idaho 
In an old story. Do you know the one of the Frightening Fidget? 
Well, in this one old Doctor Barnose 
Is riding along through Italy on a great white highway 
Made of marshmallows, when some greensuited policemen come out 
And make him stop to show his passport, which he had had made out of clothes 
As a modem novelty, but they threw him in the purple prison. 
Where like an Italianate tirade of grapejuice something exist to this day 
Numbered among the aquanauts who saved this country 
From being bombed by the submarines which I purchased you for my birthday 
In one of my most powerful moods, on the Pomeranian coast.

 

4

The gasoline must come to a halt, as the great apple shipments have done.


The true Advisor to the lesser party will not permit the Eczema to come
Into the park of Dutiful Silence. This is an Order imposed by Law.


The Marlene Dietrich suitcases are not to be opened.
Except by the pink hands of the Prelate in charge of the bombing.