Selection from “Three Moments in Paris” (1915)

Mina Loy (1882–1966)
Biography: https://poets.org/poet/mina-loy

“1. One O’Clock at Night” (1915)

Though you have never possessed me

I have belonged to you since the beginning of time

And sleepily I sit on your chair beside you

Leaning against your shoulder

And your careless arm across my back gesticulates[5]

As your indisputable male voice roars

Through my brain and my body

Arguing “Dynamic Decomposition”

Of which I understand nothing

Sleepily[10]

And the only less male voice of your brother pugilist of the intellect

Booms as it seems to me so sleepy 

Across an interval of a thousand miles

An interim of a thousand years

But you who make more noise than any man in the world when you clear your throat[15]

Deafening wake me

And I catch the thread of the argument

Immediately assuming my personal mental attitude

And cease to be a woman

Beautiful halfhour of being a mere woman[20]

The animal woman

Understanding nothing of man

But mastery and the security of imparted physical heat

Indifferent to cerebral gymnastics

Or regarding them as the self-indulgent play of children[25]

Or the thunder of alien gods

But you wake me up

Anyhow who am I that I should criticize your theories of “Plastic Velocity”

“Let us go home she is tired and wants to go to bed.”^[1]