The Furies

Not a third that walks beside me,

But five or six or more.

Whether at dusk or

Or at blinding noon, a

Of shadows that no

Excludes.—One like a kind of scrawl,

Hands scrawled trembling and blue,

A harelipped and hunchbacked

With a smile like a grapefruit rind,

Who jabbers the way I

When the brain is empty and

And the guests no longer care:

A clown, who shudders and

Is a man with a mouth of

Trapped in a dentist's chair.

Not a third that walks beside me,

But five or six or more:

One with his face gone rotten,

Most hideous of all,

Whose crutches shriek on the

As a fingernail on a

Tears open some splintered

Of childhood.

Down the

We enter a thousand

That pour the hours back,

That silhouette the

With shadows ripped from war,

Accusing and rigid,

As the streets we are discolored by.

The crutches fall to the floor.

Not a third that walks beside me,

But five or six, or

Than fingers or brain can bear—A monster strung with guts,

A coward covered with hair,

Matted and down to his knees,

Murderers, liars, thieves,

Moving in darkened

Through daylight and evening

Until the eyelids close,

Snapped like the blades of a knife,

And your dream of their death begins.

Possessors and possessed,

They keep the bedside

As a doctor or a

Might wait the darkness

Until the pale daybreak—Protectors of your life.