The bathrooms here are grotesquely fantastic,
Like circus performers in tattered elastic,
They lurk in the tapered-off corners of buildings,
Some squatting in shadows, some sparkling in new wings,
Some chatting garrulously in dark passages,
One surely filthy enough to be blasphemous,
Another, carved from black granite and marble,
Moves beyond style with an elegant warble
Of tinkling fixtures and puffs of perfume,
Exuding from porcelain in delicate plumes,
Which lend to the mind of the patient observer,
The image of birds and this idea of order:
Doves use the open air; fish the sea surrounding,
But nature gave to man a stoop as dainty as a whale a-grounding.
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