sophisticated domesticity

You can't eat your cake
and have it, too. Unless
you made your cake.

You will then have your cake
to make! And eat it, too.

And if you teach
a man to bake?

You could get fish
for dinner, any night
you cared to scale and gut
and bread and fry the stuff.

And he? He would be mixing up
from flour, baking powder, sugar,
eggs and milk and salt, a batter
sweet to lick and pour and slide
into preheated oven, taking pride
and special care to show
he'd learned your lessons,
leavened with the love
you had entrusted him,
and not without a certain touch
of his invention, changing them. He's sure

he has perfected it. Another thing
to call his own. And for dessert,

you'll try

a piece. It tastes a bit
like burning fish. It takes all things
to make a home.