Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock, By Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted

By white night-gowns.

None are green,

Or purple with green rings,

Or green with yellow rings,

Or yellow with blue rings.

None of them are strange,

With socks of lace

And beaded ceintures.

People are not going

To dream of baboons and periwinkles.

Only, here and there, an old sailor,

Drunk and asleep in his boots,

Catches tigers

In red weather.

From “An Introduction to Poetry,” edited by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia (Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers: 652 pp., $30.75)