Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis
Whispering lunar incantations
Disolve 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 toward 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 the 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 smooths 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.