Sweeney Among the Nightingales

	Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
	Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
	The zebra stripes along his jaw
	Swelling to maculate giraffe.
	The circles of the stormy moon
	Slide westward toward the River Plate,
	Death and the Raven drift above
	And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.
	Gloomy Orion and the Dog
	Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
	The person in the Spanish cape
	Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees
	Slips and pulls the table cloth
	Overturns a coffee-cup,
	Reorganised upon the floor
	She yawns and draws a stocking up,
	The silent man in mocha brown
	Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
	The waiter brings in oranges
	Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;
	The silent vertebrate in brown
	Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
	Rachel née Rabinovitch
	Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;
	She and the lady in the cape
	Are suspect, thought to be in league;
	Therefore the man with heavy eyes
	Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,
	Leaves the room and reappears
	Outside the window, leaning in,
	Branches of wistaria
	Circumscribe a golden grin;
	The host with someone indistinct
	Converses at the door apart,
	The nightingales are singing near
	The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
	And sang within the bloody wood
	When Agamemnon cried aloud,
	And let their liquid siftings fall
	To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.

T.S Eliot