by a quiet chorus of grunt and growl
and of settling down in the cozy straw.
Tonight they have not been invited

to the palace conservatory, where
taut necks jerk and vertebrc arch to the tug
of muted trumpets. Over the heads

of the tango dancers the hailstones snap
like castanets. Then—slap hands,
crack backs—all falls down, the dance-floor

tilting like an ice-floe, club chairs huddling
like queasy sea lions, the glass roof
pelted by an avalanche of knives and forks.

Of the sodden tuxedos and slithery gowns
and ruined hair-dos none will survive
this final bash. But legend will have it

before it was over the old fat gods arrived,
floating over the fallen—snub-nosed whales,
the high baroque of their bodies wobbling

like wrinkled limp balloons. There are those
who will claim (though they did not see them)
their grey skins split and fell like sloughed

dust-sheets, their battlemented backbones
and great rib-cages still slowly heaving
before they retired to the sea's museum.