“What could a housewife know about such things?”
I let the buds of yeast dissolve to milk,
stir the liquids until their color is even,
add just enough flour so the ingredients
can easily be blended by the mixer,
pour the batter in pans before it stiffens,
put it to rise with no additional heat--
and up it comes bubbling, lopsidedly heaving,
in spite of all my precautions punchdrunkenly bobbing and weaving.
I think of a certain domed brow surmounting
the pinched frown of a fixed cameo face
with a nose that pushed the two eyes out of place
above a chin with room for another mouth;
I think of the way in album pictures a house
rises and swells and sinks and shifts as it changes;
I think of the way a garden never stays
free of pests and diseases; and of maps of the fates of nations.
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