<p>420. THE ROOM
<a l:href="#c_449"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>The room a dying poet tookat nightfall in a dead hotelhad both directories — the Bookof Heaven and the Book of Bell.It had a mirror and a chair,it had a window and a bed,its ribs let in the darkness whererain glistened and a shopsign bled.Not tears, not terror, but a blendof anonymity and doom,it seemed, that room, to condescendto imitate a normal room.Whenever some automobilesubliminally slit the night,the walls and ceiling would reveala wheeling skeleton of light.Soon afterwards the room was mine.A similar striped cageling, Igroped for the lamp and found the line«Alone, unknown, unloved, I die»in pencil, just above the bed.It had a false quotation air.Was it a she, wild-eyed, well-read,or a fat man with thinning hair?I asked a gentle Negro maid,I asked a captain and his crew,I asked the night clerk. Undismayed,I asked a drunk. Nobody knew.Perhaps when he had found the switchhe saw the picture on the walland cursed the red eruption whichtried to be maples in the fall?Artistically in the styleof Mr. Churchill at his best,those maples marched in double filefrom Glen Lake to Restricted Rest.Perhaps my text is incomplete.A poet's death is, after all,a question of technique, a neatenjambment, a melodic fall.And here a life had come apartin darkness, and the room had growna ghostly thorax, with a heartunknown, unloved — but not alone.<13 мая> 1950; Итака<p>421. VOLUPTATES TACTIONUM
<a l:href="#n_16" type="note">[16]</a>
<a l:href="#c_450"><sup>{*}</sup></a></p>Some inevitable dayOn the editorial pageOf your paper it will say,«Tactio has come of age».When you turn a knob, your setWill obligingly exhaleForms, invisible and yetTangible — a world in Braille.Think of all the things that willReally be within your reach!Phantom bottle, dummy pill,Limpid limbs upon a beach.Grouped before a Magnotact,Clubs and families will clutchEverywhere the same compactParadise (in terms of touch).Palpitating fingertipsWill caress the flossy hairAnd investigate the lipsSimulated in midair.See the schoolboy, like a blindLover, frantically gropeFor the shape of love — and findNothing but the shape of soap.<27 января> 1951
