At 3 A.M., if the schedule held,

The express blew for the cross a mile

Out of town, and you woke, and your heart swelled

With the thought that some night, in your own dark cublicle,

You would whirl, in sleep or in contempt,

Past some straggle of town with scarcely a streetlight

To show the pale ghost, unloved, unkempt,

Of a place that would shuffle to life with the creak of daylight.

And once, at that whistle, you, from bed, crept,

Lifted curtains and wiped the frost from the pane,

And the magisterial headlight swept

Snow-white hills, white woods, white fields, until again

There was nothing but marmoreal moonlight

Defining the structure of night—and your feet

Cold on boards. Did you stare at the sheet’s trancelike white-

ness, which held no hint of the world’s far fury and heat?

Times change. Man changes, and thirty-five thousand

Feet down would the jet’s flight wake any boy

To the world’s bliss and rage, and the raging sand

Of the sandblast of History? Am I the boy

Who last remembers the 3 A.M.?

Indeed—some hold real estate nearby,

In plots of six feet, but now one of them

Would wake to listen and wonder why

The schedule is dead of the 3 A.M.