The woman said yes she would go to Australia with him <br />Unless he heard wrong and she said Argentina <br />Where they could learn the tango and pursue the widows <br />Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant to the end. <br />But no, she said Australia. She'd been born in New Zealand. <br />The difference between the two places was the difference <br />Between a hamburger and a chocolate malted, she said. <br />In the candy store across from the elementary school, <br />They planned their tryst. She said Australia, which meant <br />She was willing to go to bed with him, and this <br />Was before her husband's coronary <br />At a time when a woman didn't take off her underpants <br />If she didn't like you. She said Australia, <br />And he saw last summer's seashell collection <br />In a plastic bag on a shelf in the mud room <br />With last summer's sand. The cycle of sexual captivity <br />Beginning in romance and ending in adultery <br />Was now in the late middle phases, the way America <br />Had gone from barbarism to amnesia without <br />A period of high decadence, which meant something, <br />But what? A raft on the rapids? The violinist <br />At the gate? Oh, absolute is the law of biology. <br />For the pornography seminar, what should she wear?<br /><br />David Lehman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tenth-commandment/
