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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The House Of Dust: Part 03: 09: Cabaret</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.<br>You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing<br>As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .'<br>Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only,<br>'How deathly pale my face looks in that glass . . .'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You say: 'We sit and talk, of things important . . .<br>How many others like ourselves, this instant,<br>Mark the pendulum swinging against the wall?<br>How many others, laughing, sip their coffee—<br>Or stare at mirrors, and do not talk at all? . . .</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'This is the moment' (so you would say, in silence)<br>When suddenly we have had too much of laughter:<br>And a freezing stillness falls, no word to say.<br>Our mouths feel foolish . . . For all the days hereafter<br>What have we saved—what news, what tune, what play?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'We see each other as vain and futile tricksters,—<br>Posturing like bald apes before a mirror;<br>No pity dims our eyes . . .<br>How many others, like ourselves, this instant,<br>See how the great world wizens, and are wise? . . .'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, you are right . . . No doubt, they fall, these seconds . . .<br>When suddenly all's distempered, vacuous, ugly,<br>And even those most like angels creep for schemes.<br>The one you love leans forward, smiles, deceives you,<br>Opens a door through which you see dark dreams.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But this is momentary . . . or else, enduring,<br>Leads you with devious eyes through mists and poisons<br>To horrible chaos, or suicide, or crime . . .<br>And all these others who at your conjuration<br>Grow pale, feeling the skeleton touch of time,—</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or, laughing sadly, talk of things important,<br>Or stare at mirrors, startled to see their faces,<br>Or drown in the waveless vacuum of their days,—<br>Suddenly, as from sleep, awake, forgetting<br>This nauseous dream; take up their accustomed ways,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Exhume the ghost of a joke, renew loud laughter,<br>Forget the moles above their sweethearts' eyebrows,<br>Lean to the music, rise,<br>And dance once more in a rose-festooned illusion<br>With kindness in their eyes . . .</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They say (as we ourselves have said, remember)<br>'What wizardry this slow waltz works upon us!<br>And how it brings to mind forgotten things!'<br>They say 'How strange it is that one such evening<br>Can wake vague memories of so many springs!'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so they go . . . In a thousand crowded places,<br>They sit to smile and talk, or rise to ragtime,<br>And, for their pleasures, agree or disagree.<br>With secret symbols they play on secret passions.<br>With cunning eyes they see</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=358642" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The innocent word that sets remembrance trembling,<br>The dubious word that sets the scared heart beating . . .<br>The pendulum on the wall<br>Shakes down seconds . . . They laugh at time, dissembling;<br>Or coil for a victim and do not talk at all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Conrad+Potter+Aiken">Conrad Potter Aiken</a></strong></div>