L'hotel París

XXI

Since there are children without parents and parents without children
and girls at the movies with hands buried between
their thighs, and a rosary at home
and the foot-soldier killed in a fall from the battlements
and the man who bakes bread and the one who carries a yardstick
to take measurements for coffins
and since there are streetcar drives who work New Year’s
Eve and drains in sinks and there’s
the elevator with its dirty yellowish light waiting
while the concierge gets drunk on wine
and pisses down the stairwell and her daughter’s scared
and her husband’s doing it with the doctor’s wife
and the terrible streetcars with their metallic clang
and the doctor’s busy cracking walnuts
while the concierge keeps on pissing down the stairwell
banging her tits against the doors
and the son of the lady harpist who die three days ago
weeps and weeps and lights a candle and sticks it in
a wine bottle and contemplates Sophia Loren
and the Swiss girl calls down the hallway
and the cousin follows her brandishing the candelabra
and the girl who goes to bed earlier and earlier
and a chill like a hand creeps up her thighs
and for a second she thinks her ass has gotten smaller
and the neighbors who both died of poisoning
the other day and the woman and her daughter don’t
feel like eating and whimper like rats
and the cousin and the Swiss girl sleep brutally
and the candelabra’s burning and the bedspread’s burning
those noble knights buried in cloisters
while the concierge pisses down the stairs
and the husband’s worn out and the doctor’s wife
leaves and grabs the doctor and calls him a bastard
and sticks him between her thighs and everything catches fire
and the dirty pictures in the toilets
and the skull bouncing down the steps.