The title points to Cockaigne, the old folk idea of an imaginary land where everything is turned upside down. Bonta's speaker begins by asking for such a place, but it is a stubborn, stripped-down one: just enough room for rocks, fire without a flag, a country where a beggar has the best hands and money is "counterfeit nonsense." Power looks ridiculous here, like a king's wind that everyone can see. Even God is humbled, "poor lord of silence," growing in any body at all.
Then the mood shifts. The speaker admits to being seasick, closing their eyes against the moon and its "green and horrible horses." The ideal world slips away into queasy, nightmarish motion. The ending is a quiet plea: "hold me / not knowing who." The speaker wants comfort from anyone at all, as if they had been awake the whole time. The poem moves from bold, playful defiance to vulnerability, leaving a mood that is dreamlike, unsteady, and tender.