In his 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon originally used a verse from “Cactus Tree” as the epigraph to section 4, “The Counterforce.” After much anarchy and war, Pynchon’s book ends with apocalypse, without the philosophical comfort of the counterculture. These lines are a kind of apolitical declaration of freedom: “She has brought them to her senses, They have laughed inside her laughter, Now she rallies her defenses, For she fears someone will ask her For eternity—
