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hate that town;I hate the town I lived in when I was little;I hate to think of it.There were always clouds, smoke, rainIn that dingy little valley.It rained; it always rained.I think I never saw the sun until I was nine--And then it was too late;Everything's too late after the first seven years. That long street we lived inWas duller than a drainAnd nearly as dingy.There were the big CollegeAnd the pseudo-Gothic town-hall.There were the sordid provincial shops--The grocer's, and the shops for women,The shop where I bought transfers,And the piano and gramaphone shopWhere I used to standStaring at the huge shiny pianos and at the picturesOf a white dog looking into a gramaphone. How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was!On wet days--it was always wet--I used to kneel on a chairAnd look at it from the window. The dirty yellow tramsDragged noisily alongWith a clatter of wheels and bellsAnd a humming of wires overhead.They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow linesAnd then the water ran backFull of brownish foam bubbles. There was nothing else to see--It was all so dull--Except a few grey legs under shiny black umbrellasRunning along the grey shiny pavements;Sometimes there was a waggonWhose horses made a strange loud hollow soundWith their hoofsThrough the silent rain. And there was a grey museumFull of dead birds and dead insects and dead animalsAnd a few relics of the Romans--dead also.There was the sea-front,A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it,Three piers, a row of houses,And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour. I was like a moth---Like one of those grey Emperor mothsWhich flutter through the vines at Capri.And that damned little town was my match-box,Against whose sides I beat and beatUntil my wings were torn and faded, and dingyAs that damned little town.
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