Lived on one's back,
In the long hours of repose,
Life is a practical nightmare -Hideous asleep or awake.
Shoulders and
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
Snores me to hate and despair.
All the old
Surges malignant before me;
Old voices, old kisses, old
Blossom derisive about me;
While the new
Pass me in endless procession:
A pageant of
Silently, leeringly
On . . . and still on . . . still on!
Far in the stillness a
Languishes loudly. A
Falls, and the
Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to
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
Voices and sounds that impose on me,
Ere I can wake to it,
The unnatural, intolerable day.
