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[Greek text
omitted with apologies]
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
Slide
westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven
drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned 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 wisteria
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 droppings fall
To stain the stiff
dishonoured shroud.
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