before midnight what?!

In A Chinese Restaurant

The piled carp gape behind the glass, their sores
a brilliant plumage on their backs.
The king crab works its ghastly mouth; the kettle roars;
the dark eels, supine, blind, and slack,

sway and furl like heated wires.
Outside the clot-gored river moans
against its spilled-in mattresses and tires.
Still the bound claws batter false stones

in the tanks. Candied fruits lie like tongues
on the plates. A man like a mendicant king
sits by the river, and weeping swells his lungs.
An undersea light floods everything.