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.
The drink is a form of escape, and the drunk dreaming provides an imaginative outlet that the other figures in the poem don’t have. The drunk sailor may not be a full-fledged artist, but he’s at least got a spark of life in him.
Disillusionment of Ten O Clock