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32
NOCTAMBULE

Pair of dapper chaps,
Cigarettes and sashes,
Stare at me, perhaps
Desperate Apachès.
“Needn’t bother me.
Jolly well you know it;
Parceque je suis
Quartier Latin poet.

“Give you villanelles,
Madrigals and lyrics;
Ballades and rondels,
Odes and panegyrics.
Poet pinched and poor,
Pricked by cold and hunger;
Trouble’s troubadour,
Misery’s balladmonger.”

Think how queer it is!
Every move I’m making,
Cosmic gravity’s
Center I am shaking;
Oh, how droll to feel
(As I now am feeling),
Even as I reel,
All the world is reeling.

Reeling too the stars,
Neptune and Uranus,
Jupiter and Mars,
Mercury and Venus;