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