harder is facing the return to autonomy.
How much better our informal partnership
before we decided to incorporate.
In the reasoned light of hindsight,
a more viable option would have been
candlelit, covert meetings,
more passionate than profound,
more exotic than essential.
The rush to merger called down a
curse on hard-won, individual freedoms;
thus the union foundered.
Now, darkness conceals clandestine pleasures.
--PL, from delicious fatigue, 1992
