Men with picked voices chant the names of cities in a huge gallery: promises that pull through descending stairways to a deep rumbling. The rubbing feet of those coming to be carried quicken a grey pavement into soft light that rocks to and fro, under the domed ceiling, across and across from pale earthcoloured walls of bare limestone. Covertly the hands of a great clock go round and round! Were they to move quickly and at once the whole secret would be out and the shuffling of all ants be done forever. A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing out at a high window, moves by the clock: disaccordant hands straining out from a center: inevitable postures infinitely repeated-- II Two--twofour--twoeight! Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms. This way ma'm! --important not to take the wrong train! Lights from the concrete ceiling hang crooked but-- Poised horizontal on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders packed with a warm glow--inviting entry-- pull against the hour. But brakes can hold a fixed posture till-- The whistle! Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two! Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating in a small kitchen. Taillights-- In time: twofour! In time: twoeight! --rivers are tunneled: trestles cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating the same gesture remain relatively stationary: rails forever parallel return on themselves infinitely. The dance is sure. ROMANCE MODERNE Tracks of rain and light linger in the spongy greens of a nature whose flickering mountain--bulging nearer, ebbing back into the sun hollowing itself away to hold a lake,-- or brown stream rising and falling at the roadside, turning about, churning itself white, drawing green in over it,--plunging glassy funnels fall-- And--the other world-- the windshield a blunt barrier: Talk to me. Sh! they would hear us. --the backs of their heads facing us-- The stream continues its motion of a hound running over rough ground. Trees vanish--reappear--vanish: detached dance of gnomes--as a talk dodging remarks, glows and fades. --The unseen power of words-- And now that a few of the moves are clear the first desire is to fling oneself out at the side into the other dance, to other music. Peer Gynt. Rip Van Winkle. Diana. If I were young I would try a new alignment-- alight nimbly from the car, Good-bye!-- Childhood companions linked two and two criss-cross: four, three, two, one. Back into self, tentacles withdrawn. Feel about in warm self-flesh. Since childhood, since childhood! Childhood is a toad in the garden, a happy toad. All toads are happy and belong in gardens. A toad to Diana!