Not a third that walks beside me, <br />But five or six or more. <br />Whether at dusk or daybreak <br />Or at blinding noon, a retinue <br />Of shadows that no door <br />Excludes.--One like a kind of scrawl, <br />Hands scrawled trembling and blue, <br />A harelipped and hunchbacked dwarf <br />With a smile like a grapefruit rind, <br />Who jabbers the way I do <br />When the brain is empty and tired <br />And the guests no longer care: <br />A clown, who shudders and suddenly <br />Is a man with a mouth of cotton <br />Trapped in a dentist's chair. <br /> <br />Not a third that walks beside me, <br />But five or six or more: <br />One with his face gone rotten, <br />Most hideous of all, <br />Whose crutches shriek on the sidewalk <br />As a fingernail on a slate <br />Tears open some splintered door <br />Of childhood. Down the hall <br />We enter a thousand rooms <br />That pour the hours back, <br />That silhouette the walls <br />With shadows ripped from war, <br />Accusing and rigid, black <br />As the streets we are discolored by. <br />The crutches fall to the floor. <br /> <br />Not a third that walks beside me, <br />But five or six, or more <br />Than fingers or brain can bear-- <br />A monster strung with guts, <br />A coward covered with hair, <br />Matted and down to his knees, <br />Murderers, liars, thieves, <br />Moving in darkened rows <br />Through daylight and evening air <br />Until the eyelids close, <br />Snapped like the blades of a knife, <br />And your dream of their death begins. <br />Possessors and possessed, <br />They keep the bedside wake <br />As a doctor or a wife <br />Might wait the darkness through <br />Until the pale daybreak-- <br />Protectors of your life.<br /><br />Weldon Kees<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-furies/
