Discovery

"I am the fever in the head,
The bitterness between the sheets,
The madness that is hard and dead,
The horror of the streets."

Here as I lie awake and dry
It presses on me still
The agony of wandering
And going where you will.

No branch,
Nor breath to move the branch;
The hanging trees of Babylon
Are still.

No night,
Nor noon to turn to night,
The words are frozen in the mouth
They fill.

Our maid, Jane Allen,
Fly-by-night,
Left the dishes
Shining white -
Took her stockings
From the horse,
Darned the heels
With stitches coarse -
Drank a cup
Of Indian tea;
Then dropped a letter
In a tree:
And this is what
The letter said
"When you get this,
I'll be dead."

The sound's deceit
Of walking feet
On metalled street:
The river smells
And clock-tower bells:
White immortelles
On sooted graves
Where grass behaves
Like spiky waves:
So this is what the midnight keeps,
What soaks and seeps
While each one sleeps!
O then some moment from this stew
Must be snatched out for me and you,
When we wander through the blight
Of pest-house voices without fright.

What are you in the morning when you wake?
A quacking duck, a quacking drake?
A golden bear who climbs in honeyed trees?
A horde of wasps whose striped, chrome bodies teaze
The liquid air which plays about their wings?
Or are you some tall peacock bird that sings
Like devil Paganini's violin
Held tight beneath his devil's pointed chin?