TWELVE o'clock.
Along the
reaches of the street
Held in
a lunar synthesis,
Whispering
lunar incantations
Dissolve
the floors of memory
And all
its clear relations,
Its divisions
and precisions,
Every street
lamp that I pass
Beats like
a fatalistic drum,
And through
the spaces of the dark
Midnight
shakes the memory
As a madman shakes
a dead geranium.
Half-past
one,
The street
lamp sputtered,
The street
lamp muttered,
The street
lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates
towards you in the light of the door
Which opens
on her like a grin.
You see
the border of her dress
Is torn
and stained with sand,
And you
see the corner of her eye
Twists like
a crooked pin."
The memory throws up high
and dry
A crowd
of twisted things;
A twisted
branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth,
and polished
As if the
world gave up
The secret
of its skeleton,
Stiff and
white.
A broken
spring in a factory yard,
Rust that
clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and
curled and ready to snap.
Half-past
two,
The street
lamp said,
"Remark
the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out
its tongue
And devours
a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand
of a child, automatic,
Slipped
out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could
see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen
eyes in the street
Trying to
peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab
one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab
with barnacles on his back,
Gripped
the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past
three,
The lamp
sputtered,
The lamp
muttered in the dark.
The lamp
hummed:
"Regard
the moon,
La lune
ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks
a feeble eye,
She smiles
into corners.
She smoothes
the hair of the grass.
The moon
has lost her memory.
A washed-out
smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand
twists a paper rose,
That smells
of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all
the old nocturnal smells
That cross
and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence
comes
Of sunless
dry geraniums
And dust
in crevices,
Smells of
chestnuts in the streets,
And female
smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells
in bars."
The lamp
said,
"Four o'clock,
Here is
the number on the door.
Memory!
You have
the key,
The little
lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
Mount.
The bed
is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your
shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."
The last
twist of the knife.
