The Renovated Temple

MA’AM, you should sue your house!
Remember whore the pillars stood, the douse
Of sea-surge smashing clean across the porches,
Everything open, the wet windy torch,
The blind man shouting things of gods and girls
Above the wave sound in the smoky swirling
Things about Troy, the horse-trick and those troubles:

The place, Ma’am, is a private club —
Never a shout in the house or a girl either:
Only those pimply boys who breathe
Sour as cooky dough. Where once the surge,
Curtains: mirrors where the windows were.
It’s a neat place, Ma’am. They’ve stuffed the hawk
And hung the oars up varnished and they talk:
God, how they talk! — about the members and their stations,
About the house rules and the regulations‚
About their battles with the mice and spiders—
They talk of anything but what’s outside‚
The coal-fire tinkles and the tea-cup lulls.

It’s not like Dante’s time with all those skulls
And shrieks and pitch-pots and old putrid years
Dug up from Hell to dress the chandeliers,
Or Villon’s, dragging dead men in to hang,
Or Baudelaire’s when all the roof cals wrangled —
Shakespeare’s of the Fierce Dispute —
It’s not like that. It’s neat, Ma’am, and they know their duty:
Neat as a catechism.

Still, they thumb
Their eyes and wonder why you never come.