Three times I have slept in your house
and this is definitely the last.
I cannot endure the transformations:
nothing stays the same for an hour.
Last time there was a spiral staircase
winding across the high room.
People tramped up and down it all night,
carrying brief-cases, pails of milk, bombs,
pretending not to notice me
as I lay in a bed lousy with dreams.
Couldn’t you have kept them away?
After all, they were trespassing.
The time before it was all bathrooms,
full of naked, quarrelling girls –
and you claim to like solitude:
I do not understand your arrangements.
Now the glass doors to the garden
open on rows of stone columns;
beside them stands a golden jeep.
Where are we this time? On what planet?
Every night lasts for a week.
I toss and turn and wander about,
whirring from room to room like a moth,
ignored by those indifferent faces.
At last I think I have woken up.
I lift my head from the pillow, rejoicing.
The alarm-clock is playing Schubert:
I am still asleep. This is too much.
Well, I shall try again in a minute.
I shall wake into this real room
with its shadowy plants and patterned screens
(yes, I remember how it looks).
It will be cool, but I shan’t wait
to light the gas-fire. I shall dress
(I know where my clothes are) and slip out.
You needn’t think I am here to stay.