I lay near sleep, all that is left of Eden,
Amid six million souls, equally precious,
For all are ladies and gentlemen in looking glasses
And all, in this hotel or hospital,
New York's great co-existence, brushing silence,
Had turned away to sleep from their hearts' bondage.

The auspices of silence thus conferred,
The watching self chafed less and less,
I fell as one falls
In an elevator, floor after floor,
In soft and equal fall descending,
The pillow clouding and the bed a puddle
Of warmth and tiredness and no will requisite,
On this midnight of December nineteen thirty-one.

Where were you then, when suddenly I woke up,
Remotely anxious, weakly disturbed,
Where were you, Monitor, who finds the darkness
And the beginning in which long is hidden
All that we are and do not choose,
The unwilled faces of the unwilled self?

But I arose from bed, not knowing why,
And walked to the bedroom window. Looking down
Into the backyard, there I saw
Like an old photo, brown and smudged or dim,
Snow on the courtyard, violet and fairy,