Nobody knows at all

Just what an hour's been beat,

Or shows desire to go,

To be silent asleep.

 

The wagon's veering left,

The whistle, poet, sings.

And gradually grows rosy

The empty hollow East.

 

O! Dreamy maiden, please,

My wastrel self forgive!

For in some stranger nation

By fate I met that Eve!

 

She’s just as you are now...

Exactly how she was!

Would blind the greener gas

The people who would pass.

 

Was blaring senseless that

Cafe, a strange ßantan,

And somewhere hissed away

A wild and ceaseless fountain.

 

A crowd of clowns would rush,

Would fill up London town.

Rimbaud was then quite done…

Would go to Congo now!

 

In greasy dress-coats' din,

Enmeshed in grand commotion,

We would be sitting there

With plates of well-cooked lobsters.

 

Would shine the kneecap bright

The kneecap of his pants...

And would the reddest nose

Of poet, young Verlaine.

 

And just then cross the scene ,

Atop our waiting heads,

While raising up his knees,

He would ride in instead!

 

Oh goddess, Ana, you!

All good through evil passed!

The soul's desired god

Would ride in on an ass!

 

Oh you, forgotten day…

 

While making spirits dearer

With lost and broken plates,

Would kick me all too strongly...

Would hoof at me the ass!

 

But that blow's deeper mark

I can't quite rub away!

And from the python's squeeze

Can't fly off through the day!

 

Oh maiden, why, your face

Once childish, is quite dead

And your full-moon-born twin

Would come in right ahead!

 

Oh goddess of the skies,

Are you the truest tale?!

I must have lost that sound,

I must have lost your name!

I'm walking past a croup.

A lace-embroidered night.

A cigarette burns up

Within my corpse-like smile.

- 1926-1927