IN A RENTED ROOM
Yes, just sweeping the floor
With the old sexy broom
Bought on the lower east side
And painted white
To seem invisible against the ice-box
I hear the joke again. The one
That a lady with bright yellow teeth
Once told in the Parkside Hotel
To my dad and one of his friends
And it ends:
How did we get here?
Two brooms swept together.
She tells it again
And again in my dreams
Though she's long out the window
And I can't remember her name. Except
That I think of her,
And her joke every time that I sweep
My house before I slide into dustless sleep
And sifted dreams
Of many long hotel
Corridors. Keys. Bell-boys.
Telephones. Night-tables. Maids
Ring me from the bed
And shake me in the vacuum of the dead.
See. It's just a broom. The
Dust pan's no more
A laughing broom table. The broom
Is red. And the old kingdom?
That broom-garden is dead
With hotel rooms, lost laundry, and lost lies.
