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 paper rose,

That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone

With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross her brain.”
The reminiscence comes

Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust of crevices,

Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors

And cocktail smells in bars.

The circles of the stormy moon

Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.

Gloomy Orion and The Dog

Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees;

Slips and pulls the table cloth,
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganized upon the floor

She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch

Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,
Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;

The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,

And sang within the bloody wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.

Burbank crossed a little bridge
Descending at a small hotel;
Princess Volupine arrived,

They were together, and he fell. Defunctive music under sea

Passed seaward with the passing bell Slowly: the God Hercules

Had left him, that had loved him well.

The horses, under the axletree
Beat up the dawn from Istria
With even feet. Her shuttered barge
Burned on the water all the day.

But this or such was Bleistein's way:
A saggy bending of the knees
And elbows, with the palms turned out,
Chicago Semite Viennese.

A lusterless protrusive eye

Stares from the protozoic slime
At a perspective of Canaletto.
The smoky candle end of time
Declines. On the Rialto once.

The rats are underneath the piles.
The Jew is underneath the lot.
Money in furs. The boatman smiles,
Princess Volupine extends

A meager, blue-nailed, phthisic hand
To climb the waterstair. Lights, lights,
She entertains Sir Ferdinand

Klein. Who clipped the lion's wings
And flea'd his rump and pared his claws?
Thought Burbank, meditating on
Time's ruins, and the seven laws.

THE HOLLOW MEN

Mistah Kurtz-he dead.

BURBANK WITH A BAEDEKER:

BLEISTEIN WITH A CIGAR Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire-nil nisi divinum stabile est; caetera fumus-the gondola stopped, the old palace was there, how charming its gray and pink—goats and monkeys, with such hair too!-so the countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass