Oh you girls, with your sad eyes and your visions
of fortune-tellers floating in the pond of the crystal
or breathing on your palms in the electric
moment of seeing marriage written surely,

dreaming the silent room where the gypsied woman
flicks dirty cards by the cluttered paper roses,
juggles with love and conjures up initials --

girls in your leisure hours, awkward at parties,
gaming with sugar dice and casting caution
into the cockle-shell of the secret cauldron,

there is no private world, I tell you truly,
no single room for you except the lonely
room of yourselves. I can predict your futures:

bandstand your bacchanals, the blackened alleys
bright for you, cock-crow your reveille
and darkness your desired and nimble dodger;

you'll walk like crow along the winter furrow
wild in a world of day and mean with terror
while hips and cheek-bones squeak and totter narrow

then run from news-reel, strike and strychnine street
into the room of you and die in mirrors
for click and close the camera covers lovers.

P.K. Page