Advice: A Book of Poems

<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</SPAN></span> <h2 class="nobreak">BOARDING-HOUSE EPISODE</h2> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">Apples race into appetites:</div> <div class="verse">The unswerving mechanism of the table</div> <div class="verse">Hurries through the last dish of supper.</div> <div class="verse">Then an undulating interlude</div> <div class="verse">From people who have spent one pleasure,</div> <div class="verse">Distractedly juggling its aftermath</div> <div class="verse">And peering at new desires.</div> <div class="verse">One woman gazes at another</div> <div class="verse">While twitching murder shimmers in her eyes</div> <div class="verse">And skims across her face.</div> <div class="verse">Violets in a madman&#8217;s scene,</div> <div class="verse">Suspended in the air,</div> <div class="verse">Are the eyes of her neighbour.</div> <div class="verse">And in between them sits the nervous man</div> <div class="verse">With face like pouting gargoyle,</div> <div class="verse">Whose brown eyes shout the things he cannot say:</div> <div class="verse">Explosive evasions;</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</SPAN></span> <div class="verse">Fears too tired to shriek;</div> <div class="verse">Renunciations groaning from their dungeons.</div> <div class="verse">He eyes each woman, like a man</div> <div class="verse">Solemnly trying to walk on mysterious ice.</div> <div class="verse">Crisp inanities ripple back and forth</div> <div class="verse">Among these three, like ghostly parrots</div> <div class="verse">Visiting each other&#8217;s cages.</div> <div class="verse">She with crazy, violet eyes,</div> <div class="verse">Plays with her fork, as though its clink</div> <div class="verse">Rhymed with secret, chained thoughts;</div> <div class="verse">She with murder in her eyes,</div> <div class="verse">And curtly voluminous body,</div> <div class="verse">Evenly plays her child-rôle.</div> <div class="verse">Cringing on the rim of middle age,</div> <div class="verse">With broken shields piled at her feet,</div> <div class="verse">She has made this man a haunted palace</div> <div class="verse">And she stands before the door</div> <div class="verse">She dare not open, with a dagger</div> <div class="verse">For the woman standing at her side.</div> </div> <div class="stanza"> <div class="verse">They sit, afterwards, upon the veranda,</div> <div class="verse">Meekly greeting the velvet swagger of evening:</div> <div class="verse">Woman with twisted, violet eyes,</div> <div class="verse">Woman with hidden murder on her lips,</div> <div class="verse">And man like a pouting gargoyle.</div> <div class="verse">Then, like tired children,</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</SPAN></span> <div class="verse">Their words grow cool and lazy.</div> <div class="verse">They draw closer to each other</div> <div class="verse">And, with a trembling curiosity,</div> <div class="verse">Look at each other&#8217;s hands.</div> </div></div> </div> <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />