A single bed. A single room. I sing
Of man alone on the skew surface of life.
No kith, no kin, no cat, no kid, no wife,
No Frigidaire, no furniture, no ring.
Yes, but the perfect state of weightlessness
Is a vacuum the natural mind abhors:
The strait bed straightway magnetizes whores;
The bare room, aching, itches to possess.
Thus I no sooner shut the tan tin door
Behind me than I am at once at home.
Will I, nill I, a budget pleasure dome
Will rear itself in Suite R-34.
A pleasure dome of Klees and Watteaus made,
Of chairs and couches from the Fair Exchange,
Of leavings from the previous rich and strange
Tenant, of fabrics guaranteed to fade.
Here I will entertain the young idea
Of Cambridge, wounded, winsome, and sardonic;
Here I will walk the uttermost euphonic
Marches of English, where no lines are clear.
Here I will take the interchangeable
Parts of ephemerid girls to fit my bed;
Here death will first enter my freshman head
On a visitor’s passport, putting one tangible
Word in my mouth, a capsule for the day
When I will be evicted from my home
Suite home so full of life and damned to roam
Bodiless and without a thing to say.
Footnote: Mrs. Circassian
An orphan home. But into this eclectic
Mass of disasters sails Mrs. Circassian,
Maid without parallel, queen beyond question
Of household gods, gas and electric.
She puts the room right with a basilisk
Look, pats it into shape like a pillow;
Under her hard hand, the Chinese willow
Learns how to live with an abstraction. Risk
All and win all is her maiden motto,
Which makes mere matter fall into its place,
Dress right and form platoons to save its face,
And suffers Pollock to lie down with Watteau.
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