| |
| APENECK SWEENEY spreads his knees | |
| Letting his arms hang down to laugh, | |
| The zebra stripes along his jaw | |
| Swelling to maculate giraffe. | |
| |
| The circles of the stormy moon | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| The person in the Spanish cape | |
| Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees | |
| |
| Slips and pulls the table cloth | |
| Overturns a coffee-cup, | |
| Reorganised upon the floor | 15 |
| 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; | 20 |
| |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| Branches of wistaria | |
| Circumscribe a golden grin; | |
| |
| The host with someone indistinct | |
| Converses at the door apart, | |
| The nightingales are singing near | 35 |
| 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 dishonoured shroud. | 40 |
| |
