Vigil

Lived on one's back, In the long hours of repose, Life is a practical nightmare - Hideous asleep or awake. Shoulders and loins Ache-- -! Ache, and the mattress, Run into boulders and hummocks, Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes - Tumbling, importunate, daft - Ramble and roll, and the gas, Screwed to its lowermost, An inevitable atom of light, Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper Snores me to hate and despair. All the old time Surges malignant before me; Old voices, old kisses, old songs Blossom derisive about me; While the new days Pass me in endless procession: A pageant of shadows Silently, leeringly wending On . . . and still on . . . still on! Far in the stillness a cat Languishes loudly. A cinder Falls, and the shadows Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me Turns with a moan; and the snorer, The drug like a rope at his throat, Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse, Noiseless and strange, Her bull's eye half-lanterned in apron, (Whispering me, 'Are ye no sleepin' yet?'), Passes, list-slippered and peering, Round . . . and is gone. Sleep comes at last - Sleep full of dreams and misgivings - Broken with brutal and sordid Voices and sounds that impose on me, Ere I can wake to it, The unnatural, intolerable day.