free-verse24 lines
Rainy Night
by Alfred LichtensteinThe day is ruined. The sky is drunk.
Like false pearls, little stumps
Of chopped up light lie around and reveal
A glimpse of streets, a few clumps of houses.
Everything else is rotten and devoured
By a black fog, which, like a wall,
Falls down and is rotten. And the rain
Crumbles like rubble in the grip - thick - gray -
As though the whole contaminated darkness
Wanted at every moment to sink.
Down in a swamp you see an auto flash,
Like a strange, drunken plant.
The oldest whores come crawling
Along out of wet shadows - tubercular toads.
There goes one creeping by. Over there a pig is being stabbed.
The gushing rain wants to wipe out everything.
But you are wandering through the waste lands.
Your dress hangs heavy. Your shoes are soaked.
Your eye is mad with greed and screaming.
And this urges you on - and you have no peace:
Perhaps in the midst of dark fire
The devil himself appears in the form of a pig.
Perhaps something completely horrible,
Foolish, brutal, nasty is happening.