A Pushcart at the Curb

The doge goes down in state to the sea
To inspect with beady traders' eyes
New cargoes from Crete, Mytilene,
Cyprus and Joppa, galleys piled
With bales off which in all the days
Of sailing the sea-wind has not blown
The dust of Arabian caravans.

In velvet the doge goes down to the sea.
And sniffs the dusty bales of spice
Pepper from Cathay, nard and musk,
Strange marbles from ruined cities, packed
In unfamiliar-scented straw.
Black slaves sweat and grin in the sun.
Marmosets pull at the pompous gowns
Of burgesses. Parrots scream
And cling swaying to the ochre bales ...

Dazzle of the rising dust of trade
Smell of pitch and straining slaves ...

And out on the green tide towards the sea
Drift the rinds of orient fruits
Strange to the lips, bitter and sweet.

The air is drenched to the stars
With fragrance of flowering grape
Where the hills hunch up from the plain
To the purple dark ridges that sweep
Towards the flowery-pale peaks and the snow.

Faint as the peaks in the glister of starlight,
A figure on a silver-tinkling snow-white mule
Climbs the steeply twining stony road
Through murmuring vineyards to the gate
That gaps with black the wan starlight.

The watchman on his three-legged stool
Drowses in his beard, dreams
He is a boy walking with strong strides
Of slender thighs down a wet road,
Where flakes of violet-colored April sky
Have brimmed the many puddles till the road
Is as a tattered path across another sky.

The watchman on his three-legged stool,
Sits snoring in his beard;
His dream is full of flowers massed in meadowland,
Of larks and thrushes singing in the dawn,
Of touch of women's lips and twining hands,
And madness of the sprouting spring ...
His ears a-sudden ring with the shrill cry:
Open watchman of the gate,
It is I, the Cyprian.

—It is ruled by the burghers of this town
Of Asolo, that from sundown
To dawn no stranger shall come in,
Be he even emperor, or doge's kin.
—Open, watchman of the gate,
It is I, the Cyprian.

—Much scandal has been made of late
By wandering women in this town.
The laws forbid the opening of the gate
Till next day once the sun is down.
—Watchman know that I who wait
Am Queen of Jerusalem, Queen
Of Cypress, Lady of Asolo, friend
Of the Doge and the Venetian State.

There is a sound of drums, and torches flare
Dims the star-swarm, and war-horns' braying
Drowns the fiddling of crickets in the wall,
Hoofs strike fire on the flinty road,
Mules in damasked silk caparisoned
Climb in long train, strange shadows in torchlight,
The road that winds to the city gate.

The watchman, fumbling with his keys,
Mumbles in his beard:—Had thought
She was another Cyprian, strange the dreams
That come when one has eaten tripe.
The great gates creak and groan,
The hinges shriek, and the Queen's white mule
Stalks slowly through.

The watchman, in the shadow of the wall,
Looks out with heavy eyes:—Strange,
What cavalcade is this that clatters into Asolo?
These are not men-at-arms,
These ruddy boys with vineleaves in their hair!
That great-bellied one no seneschal
Can be, astride an ass so gauntily!
Virgin Mother! Saints! They wear no clothes!

And through the gate a warm wind blows,
A dizzying perfume of the grape,
And a great throng crying Cypris,
Cyprian, with cymbals crashing and a shriek
Of Thessalian pipes, and swaying of torches,
That smell hot like wineskins of resin,
That flare on arms empurpled and hot cheeks,
And full shouting lips vermillion-red.

Youths and girls with streaming hair
Pelting the night with flowers:
Yellow blooms of Adonis, white
scented stars of pale Narcissus,
Mad incense of the blooming vine,
And carmine passion of pomegranate blooms.

A-sudden all the strummings of the night,
All the insect-stirrings, all the rustlings
Of budding leaves, the sing-song
Of waters brightly gurgling through meadowland,
Are shouting with the shouting throng,
Crying Cypris, Cyprian,
Queen of the seafoam, Queen of the budding year,
Queen of eyes that flame and hands that twine,
Return to us, return from the fields of asphodel.

And all the grey town of Asolo
Is full of lutes and songs of love,
And vows exchanged from balcony to balcony
Across the singing streets ...
But in the garden of the nunnery,
Of the sisters of poverty, daughters of dust,
The cock crows. The cock crows.

The watchman rubs his old ribbed brow:
Through the gate, in silk all dusty from the road,
Into the grey town asleep under the stars,
On tired mules and lean old war-horses
Comes a crowd of quarrelling men-at-arms
After a much-veiled lady with a falcon on her wrist.
—This Asolo? What a nasty silent town
He sends me to, that dull old doge.

And you, watchman, I've told you thrice
That I am Cypress's Queen, Jerusalem's,
And Lady of this dull village, Asolo;
Tend your gates better. Are you deaf,
That you stand blinking at me, pulling at your dirty beard?
You shall be thrashed, when I rule Asolo.
—What strange dreams, mumbled in his beard
The ancient watchman, come from eating tripe.

Shrilly whispering down the lanes
That serpent through the ancient night,
They, the scoffers, the scornful of chains,
Stride their turbulent flight.

The stars spin steel above their heads
In the shut irrevocable sky;
Gnarled thorn-branches tear to shreds
Their cloaks of pageantry.

A wind blows bitter in the grey,
Chills the sweat on throbbing cheeks,
And tugs the gaudy rags away
From their lean bleeding knees.

Their laughter startles the scarlet dawn
Among a tangled spiderwork
Of girdered steel, and shrills forlorn
And dies in the rasp of wheels.

Whirling like gay prints that whirl
In tatters of squalid gaudiness,
Borne with dung and dust in the swirl
Of wind down the endless street,

With thin lips laughing bitterly,
Through the day smeared in sooty smoke
That pours from each red chimney,
They speed unseemily.

Women with unlustered hair,
Men with huge ugly hands of oil,
Children, impudently stare
And point derisive hands.

Only ... where a barrel organ thrills
Two small peak-chested girls to dance,
And among the iron clatter spills
A swiftening rhythmy song,

They march in velvet silkslashed hose,
Strumming guitars and mellow lutes,
Strutting pointed Spanish toes,
A stately company.

This is the feast of death
We make of our pain God;
We worship the nails and the rod
and pain's last choking breath
and the bleeding rack of the cross.

The women have wept away their tears,
with red eyes turned on death, and loss
of friends and kindred, have left the biers
flowerless, and bound their heads in their blank veils,
and climbed the steep slope of Golgotha; fails
at last the wail of their bereavement,
and all the jagged world of rocks and desert places
stands before their racked sightless faces,
as any ice-sea silent.

This is the feast of conquering death.
The beaten flesh worships the swishing rod.
The lacerated body bows to its God,
adores the last agonies of breath.

And one more has joined the unnumbered
deathstruck multitudes
who with the loved of old have slumbered
ages long, where broods
Earth the beneficent goddess,
the ultimate queen of quietness,
taker of all worn souls and bodies
back into the womb of her first nothingness.

But ours, who in the iron night remain,
ours the need, the pain
of his departing.
He had lived on out of a happier age
into our strident torture-cage.
He still could sing
of quiet gardens under rain
and clouds and the huge sky
and pale deliciousness that is nearly pain.
His was a new minstrelsy:
strange plaints brought home out of the rich east,
twanging songs from Tartar caravans,
hints of the sounds that ceased
with the stilling dawn, wailings of the night,
echoes of the web of mystery that spans
the world between the failing and the rising of the wan daylight
of the sea, and of a woman's hair
hanging gorgeous down a dungeon wall,
evening falling on Tintagel,
love lost in the mist of old despair.

Against the bars of our torture-cage
we beat out our poor lives in vain.
We live on cramped in an iron age
like prisoners of old
high on the world's battlements
exposed until we die to the chilling rain
crouched and chattering from cold
for all scorn to stare at.
And we watch one by one the great
stroll leisurely out of the western gate
and without a backward look at the strident city
drink down the stirrup-cup of fate
embrace the last obscurity.

We worship the nails and the rod
and pain's last choking breath.
We make of our pain God.
This is the feast of death.

Beer is free to soldiers
In every bar and tavern
As the regiments victorious
March under garlands to the city square.

Beer is free to soldiers
And lips are free, and women,
Breathless, stand on tiptoe
To see the flushed young thousands in advance.

"Beer is free to soldiers;
Give all to the liberators" ...
Under wreaths of laurel
And small and large flags fluttering, victorious,
They of the frock-coats, with clink of official chains,
Are welcoming with eloquence outpouring
The liberating thousands, the victorious;
In their speaking is a soaring of great phrases,
Balloons of tissue paper,
Hung with patriotic bunting,
That rise serene into the blue,
While the crowds with necks uptilted
Gaze at their upward soaring
Till they vanish in the blue;
And each man feels the blood of life
Rumble in his ears important
With participation in Events.

But not the fluttering of great flags
Or the brass bands blaring, victorious,
Or the speeches of persons in frock coats,
Who pause for the handclapping of crowds,
Not the stamp of men and women dancing,
Or the bubbling of beer in the taverns,—
Frothy mugs free for the victorious—,
Not all the trombone-droning of Events,
Can drown the inextinguishible laughter of the gods.

And they hear it, the old hooded houses,
The great creaking peak-gabled houses,
That gossip and chuckle to each other
Across the clattering streets;
They hear it, the old great gates,
The grey gates with towers,
Where in the changing shrill winds of the years
Have groaned the poles of many various-colored banners.
The poplars of the high-road hear it,
From their trembling twigs comes a dry laughing,
As they lean towards the glare of the city.
And the old hard-laughing paving-stones,
Old stones weary with the weariness
Of the labor of men's footsteps,
Hear it as they quake and clamour
Under the garlanded wheels of the yawning confident cannon
That are dragged victorious through the flutter of the city.

Beer is free to soldiers,
Bubbles on wind-parched lips,
Moistens easy kisses
Lavished on the liberators.

Beer is free to soldiers
All night in steaming bars,
In halls delirious with dancing
That spill their music into thronging streets.

—All is free to soldiers,
To the weary heroes
Who have bled, and soaked
The whole earth in their sacrificial blood,
Who have with their bare flesh clogged
The crazy wheels of Juggernaut,
Freed the peoples from the dragon that devoured them,
That scorched with greed their pleasant fields and villages,
Their quiet delightful places:

So they of the frock-coats, amid wreaths and flags victorious,
To the crowds in the flaring squares,
And a murmurous applause
Rises like smoke to mingle in the sky
With the crashing of the bells.

But, resounding in the sky,
Louder than the tramp of feet,
Louder than the crash of bells,
Louder than the blare of bands, victorious,
Shrieks the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

The old houses rock with it,
And wag their great peaked heads,
The old gates shake,
And the pavings ring with it,
As with the iron tramp of old fighters,
As with the clank of heels of the victorious,
By long ages vanquished.
The spouts in the gurgling fountains
Wrinkle their shiny griffin faces,
Splash the rhythm in their ice-fringed basins—
Of the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

And far up into the inky sky,
Where great trailing clouds stride across the world,
Darkening the spired cities,
And the villages folded in the hollows of hills,
And the shining cincture of railways,
And the pale white twining roads,
Sounds with the stir of quiet monotonous breath
Of men and women stretched out sleeping,
Sounds with the thin wail of pain
Of hurt things huddled in darkness,
Sounds with the victorious racket
Of speeches and soldiers drinking,
Sounds with the silence of the swarming dead—
The inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

O I would take my pen and write
In might of words
A pounding dytheramb
Alight with teasing fires of hate,
Or drone to numbness in the spell
Of old loves long lived away
A drowsy vilanelle.
O I would build an Ark of words,
A safe ciborium where to lay
The secret soul of loveliness.
O I would weave of words in rhythm
A gaudily wrought pall
For the curious cataphalque of fate.

But my pen does otherwise.

All I can write is the orange tinct with crimson
of the beaks of the goose
and of the wet webbed feet of the geese
that crackle the skimming of ice
and curve their white plump necks to
the water in the manure-stained rivulet
that runs down the broad village street;
and of their cantankerous dancings and hissings,
with beaks tilted up, half open
and necks stiffly extended;
and the curé's habit blowing in the stinging wind
and his red globular face
like a great sausage burst in the cooking
that smiles
as he takes the shovel hat off his head with a gesture,
the hat held at arm's length,
sweeping a broad curve, like a censor well swung;
and, beyond the last grey gabled house in the village,
the gaunt Christ
that stretches bony arms and tortured hands
to embrace the broad lands leprous with cold
the furrowed fields and the meadows
and the sprouting oats
ghostly beneath the grey bitter blanket of hoarfrost.

Sausheim

In a hall on Olympus we held carouse,
Sat dining through the warm spring night,
Spilling of the crocus-colored wine
Glass after brimming glass to rouse
The ghosts that dwell in books to flight
Of word and image that, divine,
In the draining of a glass would tear
The lies from off reality,
And the world in gaudy chaos spread
Naked-new in the throbbing flare
Of songs of long-fled spirits;—free
For the wanderer devious roads to tread.

Names waved as banners in our talk:
Lucretius, his master, all men who to balk
The fear that shrivels us in choking rinds
Have thrown their souls like pollen to the winds,
Erasmus, Bruno who burned in Rome, Voltaire,
All those whose lightning laughter cleaned the air
Of the minds of men from the murk of fear-sprung gods,
And straightened the backs bowed under the rulers' rods.

A hall full of the wine and chant of old songs,
Smelling of lilacs and early roses and night,
Clamorous with the names and phrases of the throngs
Of the garlanded dead, and with glasses pledged to the light
Of the dawning to come ...

O in the morning we would go
Out into the drudging world and sing
And shout down dustblinded streets, hollo
From hill to hill, and our thought fling
Abroad through all the drowsy earth
To wake the sleeper and the worker and the jailed
In walls cemented of lies to mirth
And dancing joy; laughingly unveiled
From the sick mist of fear to run naked and leap
And shake the nations from their snoring sleep.

O in the morning we would go
Fantastically arrayed
In silk and scarlet braid,
In rich glitter like the sun on snow
With banners of orange, vermillion, black,
And jasper-handed swords,
Anklets and tinkling gauds
Of topaz set twistingly, or lac
Laid over with charms of demons' heads
In indigo and gold.
Our going a music bold
Would be, behind us the twanging threads
Of mad guitars, the wail of lutes
In wildest harmony;
Lilting thumping free,
Pipes and kettledrums and flutes
And brazen braying trumpet-calls
Would wake each work-drowsed town
And shake it in laughter down,
Untuning in dust the shuttered walls.

O in the morning we would go
With doleful steps so dragging and slow
And grievous mockery of woe
And bury the old gods where they lay
Sodden drunk with men's pain in the day,
In the dawn's first new burning white ray
That would shrivel like dead leaves the sacred lies,
The avengers, the graspers, the wringers of sighs,
Of blood from men's work-twisted hands, from their eyes
Of tears without hope ... But in the burning day
Of the dawn we would see them brooding to slay,
In a great wind whirled like dead leaves away.

In a hall on Olympus we held carouse,
In our talk as banners waving names,
Songs, phrases of the garlanded dead.

Yesterday I went back to that house ...
Guttered candles where were flames,
Shattered dust-grey glasses instead
Of the fiery crocus-colored wine,
Silence, cobwebs and a mouse
Nibbling nibbling the moulded bread
Those spring nights dipped in vintage divine
In the dawnward chanting of our last carouse.

1918——1919

HARD ON YOUR RUMP
BUMP BUMP
HARD ON YOUR RUMP
BUMP BUMP

O the savage munching of the long dark train
crunching up the miles
crunching up the long slopes and the hills
that crouch and sprawl through the night
like animals asleep,
gulping the winking towns
and the shadow-brimmed valleys
where lone trees twist their thorny arms.

The smoke flares red and yellow;
the smoke curls like a long dragon's tongue
over the broken lands.

The train with teeth flashing
gnaws through the piecrust of hills and plains
greedy of horizons.

Alcazar de San Juan

I invite all the gods to dine
on the hard benches of my third class coach
that joggles over brown uplands
dragged at the end of a rattling train.

I invite all the gods to dine,
great gods and small gods, gods of air
and earth and sea, and of the grey land
where among ghostly rubbish heaps and cast-out things
linger the strengthless dead.

I invite all the gods to dine,
Jehovah and Crepitus and Sebek,
the slimy crocodile ... But no;
wait ... I revoke the invitation.

For I have seen you, crowding gods,
hungry gods. You have a drab official look.
You have your pockets full of bills,
claims for indemnity, for incense unsniffed
since men first jumped up in their sleep
and drove you out of doors.

Let me instead, O djinn that sows the stars
and tunes the strings of the violin,
have fifty lyric poets,
not pale parson folk, occasional sonneteers,
but sturdy fellows who ride dolphins,
who need no wine to make them drunk,
who do not fear to meet red death at the meanads' hands
or to have their heads at last
float vine-crowned on the Thracian sea.

Anacreon, a partridge-wing?
A sip of wine, Simonides?
Algy has gobbled all the pastry
and left none for the Elizabethans
who come arm in arm, singing bawdy songs,
smelling of sack, from the Mermaid. Ronsard,
will you eat nothing, only sniff roses?
Those Anthologists have husky appetites!
There's nothing left but a green banana
unless that galleon comes from Venily
with Hillyer breakfasts wrapped in sonnet-paper.

But they've all brought gods with them!
Avaunt! Take them away, O djinn
that paints the clouds and brings in the night
in the rumble and clatter of the train
cadences out of the past ... Did you not see
how each saved a bit out of the banquet
to take home and burn in quiet to his god?

Madrid, Caceres, Portugal

Three little harlots
with artificial roses in their hair
each at a window of a third-class coach
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

Too much powder and too much paint
shining black hair.
One sings to the clatter of wheels
a swaying unending song
that trails across the crimson slopes
and the blue ranks of olives
and the green ranks of vines.
Three little harlots
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

The plowman drops the traces
on the shambling oxen's backs
turns his head and stares
wistfully after the train.

The mule-boy stops his mules
shows his white teeth and shouts
a word, then urges dejectedly
the mules to the road again.

The stout farmer on his horse
straightens his broad felt hat,
makes the horse leap, and waves
grandiosely after the train.

Is it that the queen Astarte
strides across the fallow lands
to fertilize the swelling grapes
amid shrieking of her corybants?

Too much powder and too much paint
shining black hair.
Three little harlots
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

Sevilla——Merida

My desires have gone a-hunting,
circle through the fields and sniff along the hedges,
hounds that have lost the scent.

Outside, behind the white swirling patterns of coalsmoke,
hunched fruit-trees slide by
slowly pirouetting,
and poplars and aspens on tiptoe
peer over each other's shoulders
at the long black rattling train;
colts sniff and fling their heels in air
across the dusty meadows,
and the sun now and then
looks with vague interest through the clouds
at the blonde harvest mottled with poppies,
and the Joseph's cloak of fields, neatly sewn together with hedges,
that hides the grisly skeleton
of the elemental earth.

My mad desires
circle through the fields and sniff along the hedges,
hounds that have lost the scent.

Misto

The street is full of drums
and shuffle of slow moving feet.
Above the roofs in the shaking towers
the bells yawn.

The street is full of drums
and shuffle of slow moving feet.
The flanks of the houses glow
with the warm glow of candles,
and above the upturned faces,
crowned, robed in a cone-shaped robe
of vast dark folds glittering with gold,
swaying on the necks of men, swaying
with the strong throb of drums,
haltingly she advances.

What manner of woman are you,
borne in triumph on the necks of men,
you who look bitterly
at the dead man on your knees,
while your foot in an embroidered slipper
tramples the new moon?

Haltingly she advances,
swaying above the upturned faces
and the shuffling feet.

In the dark unthought-of years
men carried you thus
down streets where drums throbbed
and torches flared,
bore you triumphantly,
mourner and queen,
followed you with shuffling feet
and upturned faces.
You it was who sat
in the swirl of your robes
at the granary door,
and brought the orange maize
black with mildew
or fat with milk, to the harvest:
and made the ewes
to swell with twin lambs,
or bleating, to sicken among the nibbling flock.
You wept the dead youth
laid lank and white in the empty hut,
sat scarring your cheeks with the dark-cowled women.
You brought the women safe
through the shrieks and the shuddering pain
of the birth of a child;
and, when the sprouting spring
poured fire in the blood of the young men,
and made the he-goats dance stiff-legged
in the sloping thyme-scented pastures,
you were the full-lipped wanton enchantress
who led on moonless nights,
when it was very dark in the high valleys,
the boys from the villages
to find the herd-girls among the munching sweet-breathed cattle
beside their fires of thyme-sticks,
on their soft beds of sweet-fern.

Many names have they called you,
Lady of laughing and weeping,
shuffling after you, borne
on the necks of men down town streets
with drums and red torches:
dolorous one, weeping the dead
youth of the year ever dying,
or full-breasted empress of summer,
Lady of the Corybants
and the headlong routs
that maddened with cymbals and shouting
the hot nights of amorous languor
when the gardens swooned under the scent
of jessamine and nard.
You were the slim-waisted Lady of Doves,
you were Ishtar and Ashtaroth,
for whom the Canaanite girls
gave up their earrings and anklets and their own slender bodies,
you were the dolorous Isis,
and Aphrodite.
It was you who on the Syrian shore
mourned the brown limbs of the boy Adonis.
You were the queen of the crescent moon,
the Lady of Ephesus,
giver of riches,
for whom the great temple
reeked with burning and spices.
And now in the late bitter years,
your head is bowed with bitterness;
across your knees lies the lank body
of the Crucified.

Rockets shriek and roar and burst
against the velvet sky;
the wind flutters the candle-flames
above the long white slanting candles.

Swaying above the upturned faces
to the strong throb of drums,
borne in triumph on the necks of men,
crowned, robed in a cone-shaped robe
of vast dark folds glittering with gold
haltingly, through the pulsing streets,
advances Mary, Virgin of Pain.

Granada

It would be fun, you said,
sitting two years ago at this same table,
at this same white marble café table,
if people only knew what fun it would be
to laugh the hatred out of soldiers' eyes ...

—If I drink beer with my enemy,
you said, and put your lips to the long glass,
and give him what he wants, if he wants it so hard
that he would kill me for it,
I rather think he'd give it back to me—
You laughed, and stretched your long legs out across the floor.

I wonder in what mood you died,
out there in that great muddy butcher-shop,
on that meaningless dicing-table of death.

Did you laugh aloud at the futility,
and drink death down in a long draught,
as you drank your beer two years ago
at this same white marble café table?
Or had the darkness drowned you?

Café Oro del Rhin
Plaza de Santa Ana

Down the road
against the blue haze
that hangs before the great ribbed forms of the mountains
people come home from the fields;
they pass a moment in relief
against the amber frieze of the sunset
before turning the bend
towards the twinkling smoke-breathing village.

A boy in sandals with brown dusty legs
and brown cheeks where the flush of evening
has left its stain of wine.
A donkey with a jingling bell
and ears askew.
Old women with water jars
of red burnt earth.
Men bent double under burdens of faggots
that trail behind them the fragrance
of scorched uplands.
A child tugging at the end of a string
a much inflated sow.
A slender girl who presses to her breast
big bluefrilled cabbages.
And a shepherd in the clinging rags of his cloak
who walks with lithe unhurried stride
behind the crowded backs of his flock.

The road is empty
only the swaying tufts of oliveboughs
against the fading sky.

Down on the steep hillside
a man still follows the yoke
of lumbering oxen
plowing the heavy crimson-stained soil
while the chill silver mists
steal up about him.

I stand in the empty road
and feel in my arms and thighs
the strain of his body
as he leans far to one side
and wrenches the plow from the furrow,
feel my blood throb in time to his slow careful steps
as he follows the plow in the furrow.

Red earth
giver of all things
of the yellow grain and the oil
and the wine to all gods sacred
of the fragrant sticks that crackle in the hearth
and the crisp swaying grass
that swells to dripping the udders of the cows,
of the jessamine the girls stick in their hair
when they walk in twos and threes in the moonlight,
and of the pallid autumnal crocuses ...
are there no fields yet to plow?

Are there no fields yet to plow
where with sweat and straining of muscles
good things may be wrung from the earth
and brown limbs going home tired through the evening?

Lanjaron

O such a night for scaling garden walls;
to push the rose shoots silently aside
and pause a moment where the water falls
into the fountain, softly troubling the wide
bridge of stars tremblingly mirrored there
terror-pale and shaking as the real stars shake
in crystal fear lest the rustle of silence break
with a watchdog's barking.

O to scale the garden wall and fling
my life into the bowl of an adventure,
stake on the silver dice the past and future
forget the odds and lying in the garden sing
in time to the flutter of the waiting stars
madness of love for the slender ivory white
of her body hidden among dark silks where
is languidest the attar weighted air.

To drink in one strong jessamine scented draught
sadness of flesh, twining madness of the night.

O such a night for scaling garden walls;
yet I lie alone in my narrow bed
and stare at the blank walls, forever afraid,
of a watchdog's barking.

Granada

Rain-swelled the clouds of winter
drag themselves like purple swine across the plain.
On the trees the leaves hang dripping
fast dripping away all the warm glamour
all the ceremonial paint of gorgeous bountiful autumn.

The black wet boles are vacant and dead.
Among the trampled leaves already mud
rot the husks of the rich nuts. On the hills
the snow has frozen the last pale crocuses
and the winds have robbed the smell of the thyme.

Down the wet streets of the town
from doors where the light spills out orange
over the shining irregular cobbles
and dances in ripples on gurgling gutters;
sounds the zambomba.

In the room beside the slanting street
round the tray of glowing coals
in their stained blue clothes, dusty
with the dust of workshops and factories,
the men and boys sit quiet;
their large hands dangle idly
or rest open on their knees
and they talk in soft tired voices.
Crosslegged in a corner a child with brown hands
sounds the zambomba.

Outside down the purple street
stopping sometimes at a door, breathing deep
the heady wine of sunset, stride with clattering steps
those to whom the time will never come
of work-stiffened unrestless hands.

The rain-swelled clouds of winter roam
like a herd of swine over the town and the dark plain.

The wineshops full of shuffling and talk, tanned faces
bright eyes, moist lips moulding desires
blow breaths of strong wine in the faces of passers-by.

There are guards in the storehouse doors
where are gathered the rich fruits of autumn, the grain
the sweet figs and raisins; sullen blood tingling to madness
they stride by who have not reaped.
Sounds the zambomba.

Albaicin

The train throbs doggedly
over the gleaming rails
fleeing the light-green flanks of hills
dappled with alternate shadow of clouds,
fleeing the white froth of orchards,
of clusters of apples and cherries in flower,
fleeing the wide lush meadows,
wealthy with cowslips,
and the tramping horses and backward-strained bodies of plowmen,
fleeing the gleam of the sky in puddles and glittering waters
the train throbs doggedly
over the ceaseless rails
spurning the verdant grace
of April's dainty apparel;
so do my desires
spurn those things which are behind
in hunger of horizons.

Rapido: Valencia——Barcelona
1919——1920

See how the frail white pagodas of blossom
stand up on the great green hills
of the chestnuts
and how the sun has burned the wintry murk
and all the stale odor of anguish
out of the sky
so that the swollen clouds bellying with sail
can parade in pomp like white galleons.

And they move the slow plumed clouds
above the spidery grey webs of cities
above fields full of golden chime
of cowslips
above warbling woods where the ditches
are wistfully patined
with primroses pale as the new moon
above hills all golden with gorse
and gardens frothed
to the brim of their grey stone walls
with apple bloom, cherry bloom,
and the raspberry-stained bloom of peaches and almonds.

So do the plumed clouds sail
swelling with satiny pomp of parade
towards somewhere far away
where in a sparkling silver sea
full of little flakes of indigo
the great salt waves have heaved and stirred
into blossoming of foam,
and lifted on the rush of the warm wind
towards the gardens and the spring-mad cities of the shore
Aphrodite Aphrodite is reborn.

And even in this city park
galled with iron rails
shrill with the clanging of ironbound wheels
on the pavings of the unquiet streets,
little children run and dance and sing
with spring-madness in the sun,
and the frail white pagodas of blossom
stand up on the great green hills
of the chestnuts
and all their tiers of tiny gargoyle faces
stick out gold and red-striped tongues
in derision of the silly things of men.

Jardin du Luxembourg