Читать книгу Aquarium - Harold Acton - Страница 8

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DRUNK with the whiffs of steak in passage-ways,

With many a genial bar and kindly scene

Of sickly shrimps illumined by the rays

Of rose acetylene,

He wandered through the streets with empty maw;

And winter nights are raw.

And through a steaming window he could see

A saw-dust restaurant; a woman there

Was seated on an ancient lecher’s knee

With hat askew and hair

In blondine-tendrils falling Flora-wise

Over her blinking eyes.

Her lips like currants glistened and her arms

Sticky with strange narcotics, downy-white.

The elder pinched them, sucking in their charms

With pudgy fingers tight,

And of a sudden pealed behind her scarf

A clear, metallic laugh.

The youth outside relit his cigarette—

In silence longed for love articulate,

But he could watch no longer, for the sweat

Trickled a-down his pate

And stung his eyes; and what could be attained

When wages all were drained?