Walk around all day and dream that you’ve a villa by the sea,
And your wife plays the piano and bears with you quietly.
Picture to yourself a child, yours, whose hands are smooth and tiny,
And it strokes your beard and face and can call you Daddy.
Go into a bar and there have entree, soup, meat, and dessert.
Hear your praise; you loathe “yourself, but listen with delight.
Wander off to the burlesque show, stare at painted lips, at thighs,
And at vulgar, hanging breasts, moved by a thousand eyes.
Drink until the streets and lamps start to carousel around you,
Nod a street-girl to come over; haggle for a rendezvous.
Cry up to the moon. Look at buildings. Read the ads.
And wander that way, foolish, like a clock without a hand.
Wander foolish, wander useless, till you’re bored with life, and then
—Then go home and throw yourself down upon your bed again,
Like yesterday. And smoke and think about yourself and all the rest,
Till it grows quite clear to you that mice are gnawing at dry crusts,
Till you know that everything is fuming smoke like fat aflame,
And that you yourself are only just a watchdog on a chain
And that you must guard your life from the slightest stain or spot
Lest the cat should overturn the inkwell on the tablecloth.
And you must afford no access to a single roaming fly
Bringing with it two or three hungry microbes from outside.

_____________

 

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