Paris by Night

It's not a city, it's a world.

It's the sea-dead calm.-And the spring's great tide,
snarling distantly now, has retreated wide .
Rumbling, it will roll in from the ebb.
Do you hear the scratching of nocturnal crabs?

It's the dried Styx: here comes Diogenes,
ragpicker, with lantern, wandering at his ease.
The perverse poets by the somber river,
with their hollow skulls for bait-cans, fish forever.

It's the fields: in wheeling fight the hideous hags,
harpies, swoop to glean the dirty rags:
the gutter-rabbit, alert for rats, takes flight
from Bondy's boys, the vintagers ot night.

Ie's death: the cop's laid out. -In an upper room
at rest, love sucks the flesh of a heavy arm
where the slaked kisses leave their rouge in smudges.
The hour's alone. Listen: not a dream budges.

Its life: listen, the living waters shed
the eternal song upon the slimy head
of a sea-god with green naked limbs who lies
on a bed in the Morgue. . . with great wide-open eyes.