Classic Poem

Sex is of the same clay as Time! — of the same clay
Since both are in their essence but One-Way
Time is the one-way dimension: sex its tart
And subtle biological counterpart.
But even Sex is Time, too, in a sense —
That chronologic burgeoning of men's.
Is it not the sex-magnet eyeless that gives
That one-way motion to a thing that lives —
That makes us say it is alive and kicks,
Not to be classed with things, but active, full of tricks —
Which drives it on at its sex-opposite,
At rest when in contact, if it's a glove-tight-fit,
Thereby to compose that two-backed beast — give up
Its front, spherical as cup fitted to cup —
All back, as an uncut orange is all back,
The two fronts disappearing in the smack.
This kiss within the temporal universe
Is as ideal as is a point in space
However — we go full-circle never quite,
But only a relative hermaphrodite
Occurs at the intense merging of our flesh
We are back again and sundered in a flash.
Each creature keeps his front, which is his sex,
The hollow frontage, the One-way index.
No creature but retains his vis-a-vis
Chopped-off façade, productive of Thee and Me,
Meum and tuum of the far-reaching plan
Which causes us to become man and woman. —
So Sex is of the same clay as Time — is made
Out of the same proclivities of fate.