In the unreason of a rainy midnight

France blooms along the windows

Of my sleepy bathysphere,

And runs to seed, in a luxuriance of curious lights.

Escape is drawn straight through my dream

And shines to Paris, clean as a violin string,

While springtides of commotion,

(The third-class pianos of the Orient Express)

Fill up the hollow barrels of my ears.

Cities that stood, by day, as gay as lancers

Are lost, in the night, like old men dying.

At a point where polished rails branch off forever,

The steel laments, like crazy mothers.

We wake, and weep the deaths of the cathedrals

That we have never seen,

Because we hear the jugulars of the country

Fly in the wind, and vanish with a cry.

At once the diplomats start up, as white as bread.

Buckle the careless cases of their minds,

That just fell open in the sleepers,

And lock them under pillows:

For, by the rockets of imaginary sieges

They see to read big, terrible print,

Each in the other’s face,

That spells the undecoded names

Of the assassins they will recognize too late:

The ones that seem to be secret police,

Now all in place, all armed, in the obvious ambush!