When wolf is brother to the lamb And cows find hurdles on the moon And playful cats bed down with mice And spiders ravel what they weave,
When weeds refuse to crab the grass And light stews greenness out of leaves And pines don't shade new growth to death And nothing weather-breeds a storm,
Then two as one shall be as naught Yet I so ciphered round and true, A perfect nullity, will seek The new dimension that is you.
Salomon builds the poem from a list of things that never happen: wolves befriending lambs, cats sleeping beside mice, cows jumping over the moon, spiders unmaking their own webs. The second stanza turns to the natural world, where weeds spare the grass, pines leave young trees in the light, and no storm gathers from ordinary weather. Each image describes a world with the usual conflicts switched off.
Only in the last stanza do we learn what all this is for. The speaker says that if such a world ever existed, then "two as one" would amount to nothing, and the speaker, rounded off like a zero, would go looking for "the new dimension that is you." It's a puzzling, playful way to declare love. The speaker seems to be saying that the longing for another person survives even in a perfect world, and goes beyond union or harmony. The mood is wry, tender and a little mathematical, with a quiet hint that such longing may never be satisfied.