The Bijou Hotel

We arrive in a black plush hackney

Lulled over the ruts, around sudden elephants,

Witch-hat towers overhead,

Owls staring from every nook

In a threadbare tapestry the moths have eaten full of holes

Flocks of doves are flying through.

Objects flow in from all sides

As the lines of motion multiply:

Shanties, bicycles, signboards, latticed shutters,

Each striking off the next into the next

Until a great drain of a square

Whirling rickshaws, bullock carts, tongas, jitneys,

Donald Duck jalopies.

And suddenly there they all are-

Pluto, Mickey, Kilroy, Charlie Chan,

Gabby Hayes, the Shadow, the monocled Peanut Man,

The whole crowd of drifters, Gunga Dins, pith-helmeted

troopers,

Seersucker-suited traders and conspirators,

Washed-up zombies and wolfmen on the last cure

Smoking Fatimas and watching the action on Easy Street

From the sagging dashboard ashtray balconies

Of the Bijou Hotel,

Which has a Piper Cub on its roof,

With a monkey in the cockpit.