The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Pushcart at the Curb, by John Dos Passos This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Pushcart at the Curb Author: John Dos Passos Release Date: June 11, 2010 [eBook #32778] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PUSHCART AT THE CURB*** E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) A PUSHCART AT THE CURB by JOHN DOS PASSOS * * * * * _Books by John Dos Passos_ _NOVELS:_ _Three Soldiers_ _One Man's Initiation_ _Streets of Night_ _(In Preparation)_ _ESSAYS:_ _Rosinante to the Road Again_ _POEMS:_ _A Pushcart at the Curb_ * * * * * A PUSHCART AT THE CURB by JOHN DOS PASSOS [Decorative Illustration] George H. Doran Company Publishers New York Copyright, 1922, By George H. Doran Company [Decorative Illustration] _A Pushcart at the Curb. I_ Printed in the United States of America TO THE MEMORY OF WRIGHT McCORMICK WHO TUMBLED OFF A MOUNTAIN IN MEXICO My verse is no upholstered chariot Gliding oil-smooth on oiled wheels, No swift and shining modern limousine, But a pushcart, rather. A crazy creaking pushcart, hard to push Round corners, slung on shaky patchwork wheels, That jolts and jumbles over the cobblestones Its very various lading: A lading of Spanish oranges, Smyrna figs, Fly-specked apples, perhaps of the Hesperides, Curious fruits of the Indies, pepper-sweet ... Stranger, choose and taste. _Dolo_ ACKNOWLEDGMENT For permission to reprint certain of the poems in this volume, thanks are due _The Bookman_, _The Dial_, _Vanity Fair_, _The Measure_, and _The New York Evening Post_. CONTENTS PAGE WINTER IN CASTILE 13 NIGHTS AT BASSANO 65 VAGONES DE TERCERA 109 QUAI DE LA TOURNELLE 139 ON FOREIGN TRAVEL 163 PHASES OF THE MOON 185 WINTER IN CASTILE The promiscuous wind wafts idly from the quays A smell of ships and curious woods and casks And a sweetness from the gorse on the flowerstand And brushes with his cool careless cheek the cheeks Of those on the street; mine, an old gnarled man's, The powdered cheeks of the girl who with faded eyes Stands in the shadow; a sailor's scarred brown cheeks, And a little child's, who walks along whispering To her sufficient self. O promiscuous wind. _Bordeaux_ I A long grey street with balconies. Above the gingercolored grocer's shop trail pink geraniums and further up a striped mattress hangs from a window and the little wooden cage of a goldfinch. Four blind men wabble down the street with careful steps on the rounded cobbles scraping with violin and flute the interment of a tune. People gather: women with market-baskets stuffed with green vegetables, men with blankets on their shoulders and brown sunwrinkled faces. Pipe the flutes, squeak the violins; four blind men in a row at the interment of a tune ... But on the plate coppers clink round brown pennies a merry music at the funeral, penny swigs of wine penny gulps of gin peanuts and hot roast potatoes red disks of sausage tripe steaming in the corner shop ... And overhead the sympathetic finch chirps and trills approval. _Calle de Toledo, Madrid_ II A boy with rolled up shirtsleeves turns the handle. Grind, grind. The black sphere whirls above a charcoal fire. Grind, grind. The boy sweats and grits his teeth and turns while a man blows up the coals. Grind, grind. Thicker comes the blue curling smoke, the moka-scented smoke heavy with early morning and the awakening city with click-clack click-clack on the cobblestones and the young winter sunshine advancing inquisitively across the black and white tiles of my bedroom floor. Grind, grind. The coffee is done. The boy rubs his arms and yawns, and the sphere and the furnace are trundled away to be set up at another cafe. A poor devil whose dirty ashen white body shows through his rags sniffs sensually with dilated nostrils the heavy coffee-fragrant smoke, and turns to sleep again in the feeble sunlight of the greystone steps. _Calle Espoz y Mina_ III Women are selling tuberoses in the square, and sombre-tinted wreaths stiffly twined and crinkly for this is the day of the dead. Women are selling tuberoses in the square. Their velvet odor fills the street somehow stills the tramp of feet; for this is the day of the dead. Their presence is heavy about us like the velvet black scent of the flowers: incense of pompous interments, patter of monastic feet, drone of masses drowsily said for the thronging dead. Women are selling tuberoses in the square to cover the tombs of the envious dead and shroud them again in the lethean scent lest the dead should remember. _Difuntos; Madrid_ IV Above the scuffling footsteps of crowds the clang of trams the shouts of newsboys the stridence of wheels, very calm, floats the sudden trill of a pipe three silvery upward notes wistfully quavering, notes a Thessalian shepherd might have blown to call his sheep in the emerald shade of Tempe, notes that might have waked the mad women sleeping among pinecones in the hills and stung them to headlong joy of the presence of their mad Iacchos, notes like the glint of sun making jaunty the dark waves of Tempe. In the street an old man is passing wrapped in a dun brown mantle blowing with bearded lips on a shining panpipe while he trundles before him a grindstone. The scissors grinder. _Calle Espoz y Mina_ V Rain slants on an empty square. Across the expanse of cobbles rides an old shawl-muffled woman black on a donkey with pert ears that places carefully his tiny sharp hoofs as if the cobbles were eggs. The paniers are full of bright green lettuces and purple cabbages, and shining red bellshaped peppers, dripping, shining, a band in marchtime, in the grey rain, in the grey city. _Plaza Santa Ana_ VI BEGGARS The fountain some dead king put up, conceived in pompous imageries, piled with mossgreened pans and centaurs topped by a prudish tight-waisted Cybele (Cybele the many-breasted mother of the grain) spurts with a solemn gurgle of waters. Where the sun is warmest their backs against the greystone basin sit, hoarding every moment of the palefaced sun, (thy children Cybele) Pan a bearded beggar with blear eyes; his legs were withered by a papal bull, those shaggy legs so nimble to pursue through groves of Arcadian myrtle the nymphs of the fountains and valleys; a young Faunus with soft brown face and dirty breast bared to the sun; the black hair crisps about his ears with some grace yet; a little barefoot Eros crouching to scratch his skinny thighs who stares with wide gold eyes aghast at the yellow shiny trams that clatter past. All day long they doze in the scant sun and watch the wan leaves rustle to the ground from the yellowed limetrees of the avenue. They are still thine Cybele nursed at thy breast; (like a woman's last foster-children that still would suck grey withered dugs). They have not scorned thy dubious bounty for stridence of grinding iron and pale caged lives made blind by the dust of toil to coin the very sun to gold. _Plaza de Cibeles_ VII Footsteps and the leisurely patter of rain. Beside the lamppost in the alley stands a girl in a long sleek shawl that moulds vaguely to the curves of breast and arms. Her eyes are in shadow. A smell of frying fish; footsteps of people going to dinner clatter eagerly through the lane. A boy with a trough of meat on his shoulder turns by the lamppost, his steps drag. The green light slants in the black of his eyes. Her eyes are in shadow. Footsteps of people going to dinner clatter eagerly; the rain falls with infinite nonchalance ... a man turns with a twirl of moustaches and the green light slants on his glasses on the round buttons of his coat. Her eyes are in shadow. A woman with an umbrella keeps her eyes straight ahead and lifts her dress to avoid the mud on the pavingstones. An old man stares without fear into the eyes of the girl through the stripes of the rain. His steps beat faster and he sniffs hard suddenly the smell of dinner and frying fish. Was it a flame of old days expanding in his cold blood, or a shiver of rigid graves, chill clay choking congealing? Beside the lamppost in the alley stands a girl in a long sleek shawl that moulds vaguely to the curves of breast and arms. _Calle del Gato_ VIII A brown net of branches quivers above silver trunks of planes. Here and there a late leaf flutters its faint death-rattle in the wind. Beyond, the sky burns fervid rose like red wine held against the sun. Schoolboys are playing in the square dodging among the silver tree-trunks collars gleam and white knees as they romp shrilly. Lamps bloom out one by one like jessamine, yellow and small. At the far end a church's dome flat deep purple cuts the sky. Schoolboys are romping in the square in and out among the silver tree-trunks out of the smoked rose shadows through the timid yellow lamplight ... Socks slip down fingermarks smudge white collars; they run and tussle in the shadows kicking the gravel with muddied boots with cheeks flushed hotter than the sky eyes brighter than the street-lamps with fingers tingling and breath fast: banqueters early drunken on the fierce cold wine of the dead year. _Paseo de la Castellana_ IX Green against the livid sky in their square dun-colored towers hang the bronze bells of Castile. In their unshakeable square towers jutting from the slopes of hills clang the bells of all the churches the dustbrown churches of Castile. How they swing the green bronze bells athwart olive twilights of Castile till their fierce insistant clangour rings down the long plowed slopes breaks against the leaden hills whines among the trembling poplars beside sibilant swift green rivers. O you strong bells of Castile that commanding clang your creed over treeless fields and villages that huddle in arroyos, gleaming orange with lights in the greenish dusk; can it be bells of Castile, can it be that you remember? Groans there in your bronze green curves in your imperious evocation stench of burnings, rattling screams quenched among the crackling flames? The crowd, the pile of faggots in the square, the yellow robes.... Is it that bells of Castile that you remember? _Toledo--Madrid_ X The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez. The speeding dark-green water mirrors the old red walls and the balustrades and close-barred windows of the palace; and on the other bank three stooping washerwomen whose bright red shawls and piles of linen gleam in the green, the swirling green where shimmer the walls of Aranjuez. There's smoke in the gardens of Aranjuez smoke of the burning of the years' dead leaves; the damp paths rustle underfoot thick with the crisp broad leaves of the planes. The tang of the smoke and the reek of the box and the savor of the year's decay are soft in the gardens of Aranjuez where the fountains fill silently with leaves and the moss grows over the statues and busts clothing the simpering cupids and fauns whose stone eyes search the empty paths for the rustling rich brocaded gowns and the neat silk calves of the halcyon past. The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez. And slipping by mirrors the brown-silver trunks of the planes and the hedges of box and spires of cypress and alleys of yellowing elms; and on the other bank three grey mules pulling a cart loaded with turnips, driven by a man in a blue woolen sash who strides along whistling and does not look towards Aranjuez. XI Beyond ruffled velvet hills the sky burns yellow like a candle-flame. Sudden a village roofs against the sky leaping buttresses a church and a tower utter dark like the heart of a candleflame. Swing the bronze-bells uncoiling harsh slow sound through the dusk that growls out in the conversational clatter Of the trainwheels and the rails. A hill humps unexpectedly to hide the tower erect like a pistil in the depths of the tremendous flaming flower of the west. _Getafe_ XII Genteel noise of Paris hats and beards that tilt this way and that. Mirrors create on either side infinities of chandeliers. The orchestra is tuning up: Twanging of the strings of violins groans from cellos toodling of flutes. Legs apart, with white fronts the musicians stand amiably as pelicans. Tap. Tap. Tap. With a silken rustle beards, hats sink back in appropriate ecstasy. A little girl giggles. Crystals of infinities of chandeliers tremble in the first long honey-savored chord. From under a wide black hat curving just to hide her ears peers the little face of Juliet of all child lovers who loved in impossible gardens among roses huge as moons and twinkling constellations of jessamine, Juliet, Isabel, Cressida, and that unknown one who went forth at night wandering the snarling streets of Jerusalem. She presses her handkerchief to her mouth to smother her profane giggling. Her skin is browner than the tone of cellos, flushes like with pomegranate juice. ... The moist laden air of a garden in Granada, spice of leaves bruised by the sun; she sits in a dress of crimson brocade dark as blood under the white moon and watches the ripples spread in the gurgling fountain; her lashes curve to her cheeks as she stares wide-eyed lips drawn against the teeth and trembling; gravel crunches down the path; brown in a crimson swirl she stands with full lips head tilted back ... O her small breasts against my panting breast. Clapping. Genteel noise of Paris hats and beards that tilt this way and that. Her face lost in infinities of glittering chandeliers. _Ritz_ XIII There's a sound of drums and trumpets above the rumble of the street. (Run run run to see the soldiers.) All alike all abreast keeping time to the regimented swirl of the glittering brass band. The cafe waiters are craning at the door the girl in the gloveshop is nose against the glass. O the glitter of the brass and the flutter of the plumes and the tramp of the uniform feet! Run run run to see the soldiers. The boy with a tray of pastries on his head is walking fast, keeping time; his white and yellow cakes are trembling in the sun his cheeks are redder and his bluestriped tunic streams as he marches to the rum tum of the drums. Run run run to see the soldiers. The milkman with his pony slung with silvery metal jars schoolboys with their packs of books clerks in stiff white collars old men in cloaks try to regiment their feet to the glittering brass beat. Run run run to see the soldiers. _Puerta del Sol_ XIV Night of clouds terror of their flight across the moon. Over the long still plains blows a wind out of the north; a laden wind out of the north rattles the leaves of the liveoaks menacingly and loud. * * * * * Black as old blood on the cold plain close throngs spread to beyond lead horizons swaying shrouded crowds and their rustle in the knife-keen wind is like the dry death-rattle of the winter grass. (Like mouldered shrouds the clouds fall from the crumbling skull of the dead moon.) Huge, of grinning brass steaming with fresh stains their God gapes with smudged expectant gums above the plain. Flicker through the flames of the wide maw rigid square bodies of men opulence of childbearing women slimness of young men, and girls with small curved breasts. (Loud as musketry rattles the sudden laughter of the dead.) Thicker hotter the blood drips from the cold brass lips. Swift over grainless fields swift over shellplowed lands ever leaner swifter darker bay the hounds of the dead, before them drive the pale ones white limbs scarred and blackened laurel crushed in their cold fingers, the spark quenched in their glazed eyes. Thicker hotter the blood drips from the avenging lips of the brass God; (and rattling loud as musketry the laughter of the unsated dead). * * * * * The clouds have blotted the haggard moon. A harsh wind shrills from the cities of the north Ypres, Lille, Liege, Verdun, and from the tainted valleys the cross-scarred hills. Over the long still plains the wind out of the north rattles the leaves of the liveoaks. _Cuatro Caminos_ XV The weazened old woman without teeth who shivers on the windy street corner displays her roasted chestnuts invitingly like marriageable daughters. _Calle Atocha_ XVI NOCHEBUENA The clattering streets are bright with booths lighted by balancing candleflames ranged with figures in painted clay, Virgins adoring and haloed bambinos, St. Joseph at his joiner's bench Judean shepherds and their sheep camels of the Eastern kings. _Esta noche es noche buena nadie piensa a dormir._ The streets resound with dancing and chortle of tambourines, strong rhythm of dancing drumming of tambourines. Flicker through the greenish lamplight of the clattering cobbled streets flushed faces of men women in mantillas children with dark wide eyes, teeth flashing as they sing: _La santa Virgen es en parto a las dos va desparir. Esta noche es noche buena nadie piensa a dormir._ Beetred faces of women whose black mantillas have slipped from their sleek and gleaming hair, streaming faces of men. With click of heels on the pavingstones boys in tunics are dancing eyes under long black lashes flash as they dance to the drum of tambourines beaten with elbow and palm. A flock of girls comes running squealing down the street. Boys and girls are dancing flushed and dripping dancing to the beat on drums and piping on flutes and jiggle of the long notes of accordions and the wild tune swirls and sweeps along the frosty streets, leaps above the dark stone houses out among the crackling stars. _Esta noche es noche buena nadie piensa a dormir._ In the street a ragged boy too poor to own a tambourine slips off his shoes and beats them together to the drunken reeling time, dances on his naked feet. _Esta noche es noche buena nadie piensa a dormir._ _Madrid_ XVII The old strong towers the Moors built on the ruins of a Roman camp have sprung into spreading boistrous foam of daisies and alyssum flowers, and sprout of clover and veiling grass from out of the cracks in the tawny stones makes velvet soft the worn stairs and grooved walks where clanked the heels of the grave mailed knights who had driven and killed the darkskinned Moors, and where on silken knees their sons knelt on the nights of the full moon to vow strange deeds for their lady's grace. The old strong towers are crumbled and doddering now and sit like old men smiling in the sun. About them clamber the giggling flowers and below the sceptic sea gently laughing in daisywhite foam on the beach rocks the ships with flapping sails that flash white to the white village on the shore. On a wall where the path is soft with flowers the brown goatboy lies, his cap askew and whistles out over the beckoning sea the tune the village band jerks out, a shine of brass in the square below: a swaggering young buck of a tune that slouches cap on one side, cigarette at an impudent tilt, out past the old toothless and smilingly powerless towers, out over the ever-youthful sea that claps bright cobalt hands in time and laughs along the tawny beaches. _Denia_ XVIII How fine to die in Denia young in the ardent strength of sun calm in the burning blue of the sea in the stabile clasp of the iron hills; Denia where the earth is red as rust and hills grey like ash. O to rot into the ruddy soil to melt into the omnipotent fire of the young white god, the flamegod the sun, to find swift resurrection in the warm grapes born of earth and sun that are crushed to must under the feet of girls and lads, to flow for new generations of men a wine full of earth of sun. XIX The road winds white among ashen hills grey clouds overhead grey sea below. The road clings to the strong capes hangs above the white foam-line of unheard breakers that edge with lace the scarf of the sea sweeping marbled with sunlight to the dark horizon towards which steering intently like ducks with red bellies swim the black laden steamers. The wind blows the dust of the road and whines in the dead grass and is silent. I can hear my steps and the clink of coins in one pocket and the distant hush of the sea. _On the highroad to Villajoyosa_ XX SIERRA GUADARRAMA TO J. G. P. The greyish snow of the pass is starred with the sad lilac of autumn crocuses. Hissing among the brown leaves of the scruboaks bruising the tender crocus petals a sleetgust sweeps the pass. The air is calm again. Under a bulging sky motionless overhead the mountains heave velvet black into the cloudshut distance. South the road winds down a wide valley towards stripes of rain through which shine straw yellow faint as a dream the rolling lands of New Castile. A fresh gust whines through the snowbent grass pelting with sleet the withering crocuses, and rustles the dry leaves of the scruboaks with a sound as of gallop of hoofs far away on the grey stony road a sound as of faintly heard cavalcades of old stern kings climbing the cold iron passes stopping to stare with cold hawkeyes at the pale plain. _Puerto de Navecerrada_ XXI Soft as smoke are the blue green pines in the misty lavender twilight yellow as flame the flame-shaped poplars whose dead leaves fall vaguely spinning through the tinted air till they reach the brownish mirror of the stream where they are borne a tremulous pale fleet over gleaming ripples to the sudden dark beneath the Roman bridge. Forever it stands the Roman bridge a firm strong arch in the purple mist and ever the yellow leaves are swirled into the darkness beneath where echoes forever the tramp of feet of the weary feet that bore the Eagles and the Law. And through the misty lavender twilight the leaves of the poplars fall and float with the silent stream to the deep night beneath the Roman bridge. _Cercedilla_ XXII In the velvet calm of long grey slopes of snow the silky crunch of my steps. About me vague dark circles of mountains secret, listening in the intimate silence. Bleating of sheep, the bark of a dog and, dun-yellow in the snow a long flock straggles. Crying of lambs, twitching noses of snowflecked ewes, the proud curved horns of a regal broadgirthed ram, yellow backs steaming; then, tails and tracks in the snow, and the responsible lope of the dog who stops with a paw lifted to look back at the baked apple face of the shepherd. _Cercedilla_ XXIII JULIET You were beside me on the stony path down from the mountain. And I was the rain that lashed such flame into your cheeks and the sensuous rolling hills where the mists clung like garments. I was the sadness that came out of the languid rain and the soft dove-tinted hills and choked you with the harsh embrace of a lover so that you almost sobbed. _Siete Picos_ XXIV When they sang as they marched in step on the long path that wound to the valley I followed lonely in silence. When they sat and laughed by the hearth where our damp clothes steamed in the flare of the noisy prancing flames I sat still in the shadow for their language was strange to me. But when as they slept I sat and watched by the door of the cabin I was not lonely for they lay with quiet faces stroked by the friendly tongues of the silent firelight and outside the white stars swarmed like gnats about a lamp in autumn an intelligible song. _Cercedilla_ XXV I lie among green rocks on the thyme-scented mountain. The thistledown clouds and the sky grey-white and grey-violet are mirrored in your dark eyes as in the changing pools of the mountain. I have made for your head a wreath of livid crocuses. How strange they are the wan lilac crocuses against your dark smooth skin in the intense black of your wind-towseled hair. Sleet from the high snowfields snaps a lash down the mountain bruising the withered petals of the last crocuses. I am alone in the swirling mist beside the frozen pools of the mountain. _La Maliciosa_ XXVI Infinities away already are your very slender body and the tremendous dark of your eyes where once beyond the laughingness of childhood, came a breath of jessamine prophetic of summer, a sudden flutter of yellow butterflies above dark pools. Shall I take down my books and weave from that glance a romance and build tinsel thrones for you out of old poets' fancies? Shall I fashion a temple about you where to burn out my life like frankincense till you tower dark behind the sultry veil huge as Isis? Or shall I go back to childhood remembering butterflies in sunny fields to cower with you when the chilling shadow fleets across the friendly sun? _Bordeaux_ XXVII And neither did Beatrice and Dante ... But Beatrice they say was a convention. _November, 1916--February, 1917._ NIGHTS AT BASSANO I DIRGE OF THE EMPRESS TAITU OF ABYSSINIA _And when the news of the Death of the Empress of that Far Country did come to them, they fashioned of her an Image in doleful wise and poured out Rum and Marsala Sack and divers Liquors such as were procurable in that place into Cannikins to do her Honor and did wake and keen and make moan most piteously to hear. And that Night were there many Marvels and Prodigies observed; the Welkin was near consumed with fire and Spirits and Banashees grumbled and wailed above the roof and many that were in that place hid themselves in Dens and Burrows in the ground. Of the swanlike and grievously melodious Ditties the Minstrels fashioned in that fearsome Night these only are preserved for the Admiration of the Age._ [I] Our lady lies on a brave high bed, On pillows of gold with gold baboons On red silk deftly embroidered-- O anger and eggs and candlelight-- Her gold-specked eyes have little sight. Our lady cries on a brave high bed; The golden light of the candles licks The crown of gold on her frizzly head-- O candles and angry eggs so white-- Her gold-specked eyes are sharp with fright. Our lady sighs till the high bed creaks; The golden candles gutter and sway In the swirling dark the dark priest speaks-- O his eyes are white as eggs with fright --Our lady will die twixt night and night. Our lady lies on a brave high bed; The golden crown has slipped from her head On the pillows crimson embroidered-- O baboons writhing in candlelight-- Her gold-specked soul has taken flight. [II] ZABAGLIONE Champagne-colored Deepening to tawniness As the throats of nightingales Strangled for Nero's supper. Champagne-colored Like the coverlet of Dudloysha At the Hotel Continental. Thick to the lips and velvety Scented of rum and vanilla Oversweet, oversoft, overstrong, Full of froth of fascination, Drink to be drunk of Isoldes Sunk in champagne-colored couches While Tristans with fair flowing hair And round cheeks rosy as cherubs Stand and stretch their arms, And let their great slow tears Roll and fall, And splash in the huge gold cups. And behind the scenes with his sleeves rolled up, Grandiloquently Kurwenal beats the eggs Into spuming symphonic splendor Champagne-colored. Red-nosed gnomes roll and tumble Tussle and jumble in the firelight Roll on their backs spinning rotundly, Out of earthern jars Gloriously gurgitating, Wriggling their huge round bellies. And the air of the cave is heavy With steaming Marsala and rum And hot bruised vanilla. Champagne-colored, one lies in a velvetiness Of yellow moths stirring faintly tickling wings One is heavy and full of languor And sleep is a champagne-colored coverlet, the champagne-colored stockings of Venus ... And later One goes And pukes beautifully beneath the moon, Champagne-colored. II ODE TO ENNUI The autumn leaves that this morning danced with the wind, curtseying in slow minuettes, giddily whirling in bacchanals, balancing, hesitant, tiptoe, while the wind whispered of distant hills, and clouds like white sails, sailing in limpid green ice-colored skies, have crossed the picket fence and the three strands of barbed wire; they have leapt the green picket fence despite the sentry's bayonet. Under the direction of a corporal three soldiers in khaki are sweeping them up, sweeping up the autumn leaves, crimson maple leaves, splotched with saffron, ochre and cream, brown leaves of horse-chestnuts ... and the leaves dance and curtsey round the brooms, full of mirth, wistful of the journey the wind promised them. This morning the leaves fluttered gaudily, reckless, giddy from the wind's dances, over the green picket fence and the three strands of barbed wire. Now they are swept up and put in a garbage can with cigarette butts and chewed-out quids of tobacco, burnt matches, old socks, torn daily papers, and dust from the soldiers' blankets. And the wind blows tauntingly over the mouth of the garbage can, whispering, Far away, mockingly, Far away ... And I too am swept up and put in a garbage can with smoked cigarette ash and chewed-out quids of tobacco; I am fallen into the dominion of the great dusty queen ... Ennui, iron goddess, cobweb-clothed goddess of all useless things, of attics cluttered with old chairs for centuries unsatupon, of strong limbs wriggling on office stools, of ancient cab-horses and cabs that sleep all day in silent sunny squares, of camps bound with barbed wire, and green picket fences-- bind my eyes with your close dust choke my ears with your grey cobwebs that I may not see the clouds that sail away across the sky, far away, tauntingly, that I may not hear the wind that mocks and whispers and is gone in pursuit of the horizon. III TIVOLI TO D. P. The ropes of the litter creak and groan As the bearers turn down the steep path; Pebbles scuttle under slipping feet. But the Roman poet lies back confident On his magenta cushions and mattresses, Thinks of Greek bronzes At the sight of the straining backs of his slaves. The slaves' breasts shine with sweat, And they draw deep breaths of the cooler air As they lurch through tunnel after tunnel of leaves. At last, where the spray swirls like smoke, And the river roars in a cauldron of green, The poet feels his fat arms quiver And his eyes and ears drowned and exalted In the reverberance of the fall. The ropes of the litter creak and groan, The embroidered curtains, moist with spray, Flutter in the poet's face; Pebbles scuttle under slipping feet As the slaves strain up the path again, And the Roman poet lies back confident Among silk cushions of gold and magenta, His hands clasped across his mountainous belly, Thinking of the sibyll and fate, And gorgeous and garlanded death, Mouthing hexameters. But I, my belly full and burning as the sun With the good white wine of the Alban hills Stumble down the path Into the cool green and the roar, And wonder, and am abashed. IV VENICE 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. V ASOLO GATE 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. VI HARLEQUINADE 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. VII TO THE MEMORY OF DEBUSSY _Good Friday, 1918._ 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. VIII PALINODE OF VICTORY 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. IX 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 cure'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_ X 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_ VAGONES DE TERCERA _Refrain_ HARD ON YOUR RUMP BUMP BUMP HARD ON YOUR RUMP BUMP BUMP I 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_ II TO R. H. 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_ III 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_ IV 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_ V VIRGEN DE LAS ANGUSTIAS 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_ VI TO R. J. It would be fun, you said, sitting two years ago at this same table, at this same white marble cafe 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 cafe table? Or had the darkness drowned you? _Cafe Oro del Rhin_ _Plaza de Santa Ana_ VII 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_ VIII 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_ IX 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_ X 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_ QUAI DE LA TOURNELLE I 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_ II The shadows make strange streaks and mottled arabesques of violet on the apricot-tinged walks where the thin sunlight lies like flower-petals. On the cool wind there is a fragrance indefinable of strawberries crushed in deep woods. And the flushed sunlight, the wistful patterns of shadow on gravel walks between tall elms and broad-leaved lindens, the stretch of country, yellow and green, full of little particolored houses, and the faint intangible sky, have lumped my soggy misery, like clay in the brown deft hands of a potter, and moulded a song of it. _Saint Germain-en-Laye_ III In the dark the river spins, Laughs and ripples never ceasing, Swells to gurgle under arches, Swishes past the bows of barges, in its haste to swirl away From the stone walls of the city That has lamps that weight the eddies Down with snaky silver glitter, As it flies it calls me with it Through the meadows to the sea. I close the door on it, draw the bolts, Climb the stairs to my silent room; But through the window that swings open Comes again its shuttle-song, Spinning love and night and madness, Madness of the spring at sea. IV The streets are full of lilacs lilacs in boys' buttonholes lilacs at women's waists; arms full of lilacs, people trail behind them through the moist night long swirls of fragrance, fragrance of gardens fragrance of hedgerows where they have wandered all the May day where the lovers have held each others hands and lavished vermillion kisses under the portent of the swaying plumes of the funereal lilacs. The streets are full of lilacs that trail long swirls and eddies of fragrance arabesques of fragrance like the arabesques that form and fade in the fleeting ripples of the jade-green river. _Porte Maillot_ V As a gardener in a pond splendid with lotus and Indian nenuphar wades to his waist in the warm black water stooping to this side and that to cull the snaky stems of the floating white glittering lilies groping to break the harsh stems of the imperious lotus lifting the huge flowers high in a cluster in his hand till they droop against the moon; so I grope through the streets of the night culling out of the pool of the spring-reeking, rain-reeking city gestures and faces. _Place St. Michel_ VI TO A. K. MC C. This is a garden where through the russet mist of clustered trees and strewn November leaves, they crunch with vainglorious heels of ancient vermillion the dry dead of spent summer's greens, and stalk with mincing sceptic steps and sound of snuffboxes snapping to the capping of an epigram, in fluffy attar-scented wigs ... the exquisite Augustans. _Tuileries_ VII They come from the fields flushed carrying bunches of limp flowers they plucked on teeming meadows and moist banks scented of mushrooms. They come from the fields tired softness of flowers in their eyes and moisture of rank sprouting meadows. They stroll back with tired steps lips still soft with the softness of petals voices faint with the whisper of woods; and they wander through the darkling streets full of stench of bodies and clothes and merchandise full of the hard hum of iron things; and into their cheeks that the wind had burned and the sun that kisses burned out on the rustling meadows into their cheeks soft with lazy caresses comes sultry caged breath of panthers fetid, uneasy fury of love sprouting hot in the dust and stench of walls and clothes and merchandise, pent in the stridence of the twilight streets. And they look with terror in each other's eyes and part their hot hands stained with grasses and flowerstalks and are afraid of their kisses. VIII EMBARQUEMENT POUR CYTHERE AFTER WATTEAU The mists have veiled the far end of the lake this sullen amber afternoon; our island is quite hidden, and the peaks hang wan as clouds above the ruddy haze. Come, give your hand that lies so limp, a tuberose among brown oak-leaves; put your hand in mine and let us leave this bank where we have lain the day long. In the boat the naked oarsman stands. Let us walk faster, or do you fear to tear that brocaded dress in apricot and grey? Love, there are silk cushions in the stern maroon and apple-green, crocus-yellow, crimson, amber-grey. We will lie and listen to the waves slap soft against the prow, and watch the boy slant his brown body to the long oar-stroke. But, love, we are more beautiful than he. We have forgotten the grey sick yearning nights brushed off the old cobwebs of desire; we stand strong immortal as the slender brown boy who waits to row our boat to the island. But love how your steps drag. And what is this bundle of worn brocades I press so passionately to me? Old rags of the past, snippings of Helen's dress, of Melisande's, scarfs of old paramours rotted in the grave ages and ages since. No lake the ink yawns at me from the writing table. IX LA RUE DU TEMPS PASSE Far away where the tall grey houses fade A lamp blooms dully through the dusk, Through the effacing dusk that gently veils The traceried balconies and the wreaths Carved above the shuttered windows Of forgotten houses. Behind one of the crumbled garden walls A pale woman sits in drooping black And stares with uncomprehending eyes At the thorny angled twigs that bore Years ago in the moon-spun dusk One scarlet rose. In an old high room where the shadows troop On tiptoe across the creaking boards A shrivelled man covers endless sheets Rounding out in his flourishing hand Sentence after sentence loud With dead kings' names. Looking out at the vast grey violet dusk A pale boy sits in a window, a book Wide open on his knees, and fears With cold choked fear the thronging lives That lurk in the shadows and fill the dusk With menacing steps. Far away the gaslamp glows dull gold A vague tulip in the misty night. The clattering drone of a distant tram Grows loud and fades with a hum of wires Leaving the street breathless with silence, chill And the listening houses. _Bordeaux_ X _O douce Sainte Genevieve ramene moi a ta ville, Paris._ In the smoke of morning the bridges are dusted with orangy sunshine. Bending their black smokestacks far back muddling themselves in their spiralling smoke the tugboats pass under the bridges and behind them stately gliding smooth like clouds the barges come black barges with blunt prows spurning the water gently gently rebuffing the opulent wavelets of opal and topaz and sapphire, barges casually come from far towns towards far towns unhurryingly bound. The tugboats shrieks and shrieks again calling beyond the next bend and away. In the smoke of morning the bridges are dusted with orangy sunshine. _O douce Sainte Genevieve ramene moi a ta ville, Paris._ Big hairy-hoofed horses are drawing carts loaded with flour-sacks, white flour-sacks, bluish in the ruddy flush of the morning streets. On one cart two boys perch wrestling and their arms and faces glow ruddy against the white flour-sacks as the sun against the flour-white sky. _O douce Sainte Genevieve ramene moi a ta ville, Paris._ Under the arcade loud as castanettes with steps of little women hurrying to work an old hag who has a mole on her chin that is tufted with long white hairs sells incense-sticks, and the trail of their strangeness lingers in the many-scented streets among the smells of markets and peaches and the must of old books from the quays and the warmth of early-roasting coffee. The old hag's incense has smothered the timid scent of wild strawberries and triumphantly mingled with the strong reek from the river of green slime along stonework of docks and the pitch-caulked decks of barges, barges casually come from far towns towards far towns unhurryingly bound. _O douce Sainte Genevieve ramene moi a ta ville, Paris._ XI A L'OMBRE DES JEUNES FILLES EN FLEURS And now when I think of you I see you on your piano-stool finger the ineffectual bright keys and even in the pinkish parlor glow your eyes sea-grey are very wide as if they carried the reflection of mocking black pinebranches and unclimbed red-purple mountains mist-tattered under a violet-gleaming evening. But chirruping of marriageable girls voices of eager, wise virgins, no lamp unlit every wick well trimmed, fill the pinkish parlor chairs, bobbing hats and shrill tinkling teacups in circle after circle about you so that I can no longer see your eyes. Shall I tear down the pinkish curtains smash the imitation ivory keyboard that you may pluck with bare fingers on the strings? I sit cramped in my chair. Futility tumbles everlastingly like great flabby snowflakes about me. Were they in your eyes, or mine the tattered mists about the mountains and the pitiless grey sea? _1919_ ON FOREIGN TRAVEL I Grey riverbanks in the dusk Melting away into mist A hard breeze sharp off the sea The ship's screws lunge and throb And the voices of sailors singing. O I have come wandering Out of the dust of many lands Ears by all tongues jangled Feet worn by all arduous ways-- O the voices of sailors singing. What nostalgia of sea And free new-scented spaces dreams of towns vermillion-gated Must be in their blood as in mine That the sailors long so in singing. Churned water marbled astern Grey riverbanks in the dusk Melting away into mist And a shrill wind hard off the sea. O the voices of sailors singing. II Padding lunge of a camel's stride turning the sharp purple flints. A man sings: Breast deep in the dawn a queen of the east; the woolen folds of her robe hang white and straight as the hard marble columns of the temple of Jove. A thousand days the pebbles have scuttled under the great pads of my camels. A thousands days like bite of sour apples have been bitter with desire in my mouth. A thousand days of cramped legs flecked with green slobber of dromedaries. At the crest of the road that transfixes the sun she awaits me lean with desire with muscles tightened by these thousand days pallid with dust sinewy naked before her. Padding lunge of a camel's stride over the flint-strewn hills. A man sings: I have heard men sing songs of how in scarlet pools in the west in purpurate mist that bursts from the sun trodden like a grape under the feet of darkness a woman with great breasts thighs white like wintry mountains bathes her nakedness. I have lain biting my cheeks many nights with ears murmurous with the songs of these strange men. My arms have stung as if burned by the touch of red ants with anguish to circle strokingly her bulging smooth body. My blood has soured to gall. The ten toes of my feet are hard as buzzards' claws from the stones of roads, from clambering cold rockfaces of hills. For uncountable days' journeys jouncing on the humps of camels iron horizons have swayed like the rail of a ship at sea mountains have tossed like wine shaken hard in a wine cup. I have heard men sing songs of the scarlet pools of the sunset. Two men, bundled pyramids of brown abreast, bow to the long slouch of their slowstriding camels. Shrilly the yellow man sings: In the courts of Han green fowls with carmine tails peck at the yellow grain court ladies scatter with tiny ivory hands, the tails of the fowls droop with multiple elegance over the wan blue stones as the hands of courtladies droop on the goldstiffened silk of their angular flower-embroidered dresses. In the courts of Han little hairy dogs are taught to bark twice at the mention of the name of Confucius. The twittering of the women that hop like silly birds through the courts of Han became sharp like little pins in my ears, their hands in my hands rigid like small ivory scoops to scoop up mustard with when I had heard the songs of the western pools where the great queen is throned on a purple throne in whose vast encompassing arms all bitter twigs of desire burst into scarlet bloom. Padding lunge of the camel's stride over flint-strewn hills. The brown man sings: On the house-encumbered hills of great marble Rome no man has ever counted the columns no man has ever counted the statues no man has ever counted the laws sharply inscribed in plain writing on tablets of green bronze. At brightly lit tables in a great brick basilica seven hundred literate slaves copy on rolls of thin parchment adorned by seals and purple bows the taut philosophical epigrams announced by the emperor each morning while taking his bath. A day of rain and roaring gutters the wine-reeking words of a drunken man who clenched about me hard-muscled arms and whispered with moist lips against my ear filled me with smell and taste of spices with harsh panting need to seek out the great calm implacable queen of the east who erect against sunrise holds in the folds of her woolen robe all knowledge of delight against whose hard white flesh my flesh will sear to cinders in a last sheer flame. Among the house-encumbered hills of great marble Rome I could no longer read the laws inscribed on tablets of green bronze. The maxims of the emperor's philosophy were croaking of toads in my ears. A day of rain and roaring gutters the wine-reeking words of a drunken man: ... breast deep in the dawn a queen of the east. The camels growl and stretch out their necks, their slack lips jiggle as they trot towards a water hole in a pebbly torrent bed. The riders pile dry twigs for a fire and gird up their long gowns to warm at the flame their lean galled legs. Says the yellow man: You have seen her in the west? Says the brown man: Hills and valleys stony roads. In the towns the bright eyes of women looking out from lattices. Camps in the desert where men passed the time of day where were embers of fires and greenish piles of camel-dung. You have seen her in the east? Says the yellow man: Only red mountains and bare plains, the blue smoke of villages at evening, brown girls bathing along banks of streams. I have slept with no woman only my dream. Says the brown man: I have looked in no woman's eyes only stared along eastward roads. They eat out of copper bowls beside the fire in silence. They loose the hobbles from the knees of their camels and shout as they jerk to their feet. The yellow man rides west. The brown man rides east. Their songs trail among the split rocks of the desert. Sings the yellow man: I have heard men sing songs of how in the scarlet pools that spurt from the sun trodden like a grape under the feet of darkness a woman with great breasts bathes her nakedness. Sings the brown man: After a thousand days of cramped legs flecked with green slobber of dromedaries she awaits me lean with desire pallid with dust sinewy naked before her. Their songs fade in the empty desert. III There was a king in China. He sat in a garden under a moon of gold while a black slave scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald. Beyond the tulip bed where the tulips were stiff goblets of fiery wine stood the poets in a row. One sang the intricate patterns of snowflakes One sang the henna-tipped breasts of girls dancing and of yellow limbs rubbed with attar. One sang red bows of Tartar horsemen and whine of arrows and blood-clots on new spearshafts The others sang of wine and dragons coiled in purple bowls, and one, in a droning voice recited the maxims of Lao Tse. (Far off at the walls of the city groaning of drums and a clank of massed spearmen. Gongs in the temples.) The king sat under a moon of gold while a black slave scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald. The long gold nails of his left hand twined about a red tulip blotched with black, a tulip shaped like a dragon's mouth or the flames bellying about a pagoda of sandalwood. The long gold nails of his right hand were held together at the tips in an attitude of discernment: to award the tulip to the poet of the poets that stood in a row. (Gongs in the temples. Men with hairy arms climbing on the walls of the city. They have red bows slung on their backs; their hands grip new spearshafts.) The guard of the tomb of the king's great grandfather stood with two swords under the moon of gold. With one sword he very carefully slit the base of his large belly and inserted the other and fell upon it and sprawled beside the king's footstool. His blood sprinkled the tulips and the poets in a row. (The gongs are quiet in the temples. Men with hairy arms scattering with taut bows through the city; there is blood on new spearshafts.) The long gold nails of the king's right hand were held together at the tips in an attitude of discernment. The geometrical glitter of snowflakes, the pointed breasts of yellow girls crimson with henna, the swirl of river-eddies about a barge where men sit drinking, the eternal dragon of magnificence.... Beyond the tulip bed stood the poets in a row. The garden full of spearshafts and shouting and the whine of arrows and the red bows of Tartars and trampling of the sharp hoofs of war-horses. Under the golden moon the men with hairy arms struck off the heads of the tulips in the tulip-bed and of the poets in a row. The king lifted the hand that held the flaming dragon-flower. Him of the snowflakes, he said. On a new white spearshaft the men with hairy arms spitted the king and the black slave who scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald. There was a king in China. IV Says the man from Weehawken to the man from Sioux City as they jolt cheek by jowl on the bus up Broadway: --That's her name, Olive Thomas, on the red skysign, died of coke or somethin' way over there in Paris. Too much money. Awful immoral the lives them film stars lead. The eye of the man from Sioux City glints in the eye of the man from Weehawken. Awful ... lives out of sky-signs and lust; curtains of pink silk fluffy troubling the skin rooms all prinkly with chandeliers, bed cream-color with pink silk tassles creased by the slender press of thighs. Her eyebrows are black her lips rubbed scarlet breasts firm as peaches gold curls gold against her cheeks. She dead all of her dead way over there in Paris. O golden Aphrodite. The eye of the man from Weehawken slants away from the eye of the man from Sioux City. They stare at the unquiet gold dripping sky-signs. PHASES OF THE MOON I Again they are plowing the field by the river; in the air exultant a smell of wild garlic crushed out by the shining steel in the furrow that opens softly behind the heavy-paced horses, dark moist noisy with fluttering of sparrows; and their chirping and the clink of the harness chimes like bells; and the plowman walks at one side with sliding steps, his body thrown back from the waist. O the sudden sideways lift of his back and his arms as he swings the plow from the furrow. And behind the river sheening blue and the white beach and the sails of schooners, and hoarsely laughing the black crows wheel and glint. Ha! Haha! Other springs you answered their laughing and shouted at them across the fallow lands that smelt of wild garlic and pinewoods and earth. This year the crows flap cawing overhead Ha! Haha! and the plow-harness clinks and the pines echo the moaning shore. No one laughs back at the laughing crows. No one shouts from the edge of the new-plowed field. _Sandy Point_ II The full moon soars above the misty street filling the air with a shimmer of silver. Roofs and chimney-pots cut silhouettes of dark against the milk-washed sky! O moon fast waning! Seems only a night ago you hung a shallow cup of topaz-colored glass that tilted towards my feverish dry lips brimful of promise in the flaming west: O moon fast waning! And each night fuller and colder, moon, the silver has welled up within you; still I I have not drunk, only the salt tide of parching desires has welled up within me: only you have attained, waning moon. The moon soars white above the stony street, wan with fulfilment. O will the tide of yearning ebb with the moon's ebb leaving me cool darkness and peace with the moon's waning? _Madrid_ III The shrill wind scatters the bloom of the almond trees but under the bark of the shivering poplars the sap rises and on the dark twigs of the planes buds swell. Out in the country along soggy banks of ditches among busy sprouting grass there are dandelions. Under the asphalt under the clamorous paving-stones the earth heaves and stirs and all the blind live things expand and writhe. Only the dead lie still in their graves, stiff, heiratic, only the changeless dead lie without stirring. Spring is not a good time for the dead. _Battery Park_ IV Buildings shoot rigid perpendiculars latticed with window-gaps into the slate sky. Where the wind comes from the ice crumbles about the edges of green pools; from the leaping of white thighs comes a smooth and fleshly sound, girls grip hands and dance grey moss grows green under the beat of feet of saffron crocus-stained. Where the wind comes from purple windflowers sway on the swelling verges of pools, naked girls grab hands and whirl fling heads back stamp crimson feet. Buildings shoot rigid perpendiculars latticed with window-gaps into the slate sky. Garment-workers loaf in their overcoats (stare at the gay breasts of pigeons that strut and peck in the gutters). Their fingers are bruised tugging needles through fuzzy hot layers of cloth, thumbs roughened twirling waxed thread; they smell of lunchrooms and burnt cloth. The wind goes among them detaching sweat-smells from underclothes making muscles itch under overcoats tweaking legs with inklings of dancetime. Bums on park-benches spit and look up at the sky. Garment-workers in their overcoats pile back into black gaps of doors. Where the wind comes from scarlet windflowers sway on rippling verges of pools, sound of girls dancing thud of vermillion feet. _Madison Square_ V The stars bend down through the dingy platitude of arc-lights as if they were groping for something among the houses, as if they would touch the gritty pavement covered with dust and scraps of paper and piles of horse-dung of the wide deserted square. They are all about me; they sear my body. How very cold the stars are touching my body. What do they seek the fierce ice-flames of the stars in the platitude of arc-lights? _Plaza Mayor, Madrid_ VI Not willingly have I wronged you O Eros, it is the bitter blood of joyless generations making my fingers loosen suddenly about the full glass of purple wine for which my dry lips ache, making me turn aside from the wide arms of lovers that would have slaked the rage of my body for supple arms and burning young flushed faces to wander in solitary streets. A funeral clatters over the glimmering cobbles; they are burying despair! Lank horses whose raw bones show through the embroidered black caparisons and whose heads jerk feebly under the tall nodding crests; they are burying despair. A great hearse that trundles crazily along under pompous swaying plumes and intricate designs of mud-splashed heraldry; they are burying despair! A coffin obliterated under the huge folds of a faded velvet pall and following clattering over the cobblestones lurching through mud-puddles a long train of cabs rain-soaked barouches old landaus off which the paint has peeled leprous coupes; in their blank windows shines the glint of interminable gaslamps; they are burying despair! Joyously I turn into the wineshop where with strumming of tambourines and staccato cackle of castanets they are welcoming the new year, and I look in the eyes of the woman; (are they your wide eyes O Eros?) who sits with wine-dabbled lips and stained tinsel dress torn open by the brown hands of strong young lovers; (were they your brown hands O Eros?). --Your flesh is hot to my cold hands hot to thaw the ice of an old curse now that with pomp of plumes and strings of ceremonial cabs they are burying despair. She laughs and points with a skinny forefinger at the flabby yellow breasts that hang over the tarnished tinsel of her dress, and shows me her brown wolf's teeth; and the blood in my temples goes suddenly cold with bitterness and I know it was not despair that they buried. _New Year's Day--Casa de Bottin_ VII The leaves are full grown now and the lindens are in flower. Horseshoes leave their mark on the sun-softened asphalt. Men unloading vegetable carts along the steaming market curb bare broad chests pink from sweating; their wet shirts open to the last button cling to their ribs and shoulders. The leaves are full grown now and the lindens are in flower. At night along the riverside glinting watery lights sway upon the lapping waves like many-colored candles that flicker in the wind. The warm wind smells of pitch from the moored barges smells of the broad leaves of the trees wilted from the day's long heat; smells of gas from the last taxicab. Sounds of the riverwater rustling circumspectly past the piers of bridges that span the glitter with dark of men and women's voices many voices mouth to mouth smoothness of flesh touching flesh, a harsh short sigh blurred into a kiss. The leaves are full grown now and the lindens are in flower. _Quai Malaquais_ VIII In me somewhere is a grey room my fathers worked through many lives to build; through the barred distorting windowpanes I see the new moon in the sky. When I was small I sat and drew endless pictures in all colors on the walls; tomorrow the pictures should take life I would stalk down their long heroic colonnades. When I was fifteen a red-haired girl went by the window; a red sunset threw her shadow on the stiff grey wall to burn the colors of my pictures dead. Through all these years the walls have writhed with shadow overlaid upon shadow. I have bruised my fingers on the windowbars so many lives cemented and made strong. While the bars stand strong, outside the great processions of men's lives go past. Their shadows squirm distorted on my wall. Tonight the new moon is in the sky. _Stuyvesant Square_ IX Three kites against the sunset flaunt their long-tailed triangles above the inquisitive chimney-pots. A pompous ragged minstrel sings beside our dining-table a very old romantic song: _I love the sound of the hunting-horns deep in the woods at night._ A wind makes dance the fine acacia leaves and flutters the cloths of the tables. The kites tremble and soar. The voice throbs sugared into croaking base broken with the burden of the too ancient songs. And yet, beyond the flaring sky, beyond the soaring kites, where are no voices of singers, no strummings of guitars, the untarnished songs hang like great moths just broken through the dun threads of their cocoons, moist, motionless, limp as flowers on the inaccessible twigs of the yewtree, Ygdrasil, the untarnished songs. Will you put your hand in mine pompous street-singer, and start on a quest with me? For men have cut down the woods where the laurel grew to build streets of frame houses, they have dug in the hills after iron and frightened the troll-king away; at night in the woods no hunter puffs out his cheeks to call to the kill on the hunting-horn. Now when the kites flaunt bravely their tissue-paper glory in the sunset we will walk together down the darkening streets beyond these tables and the sunset. We will hear the singing of drunken men and the songs whores sing in their doorways at night and the endless soft crooning of all the mothers, and what words the young men hum when they walk beside the river their arms hot with caresses, their cheeks pressed against their girls' cheeks. We will lean very close to the quiet lips of the dead and feel in our worn-out flesh perhaps a flutter of wings as they soar from us the untarnished songs. But the minstrel sings as the pennies clink: _I love the sound of the hunting-horns deep in the woods at night._ O who will go on a quest with me beyond all wide seas all mountain passes and climb at last with me among the imperishable branches of the yewtree, Ygdrasil, so that all the limp unuttered songs shall spread their great moth-wings and soar above the craning necks of the chimneys above the tissue-paper kites and the sunset above the diners and their dining-tables, beat upward with strong wing-beats steadily till they can drink the quenchless honey of the moon. _Place du Tertre_ X Dark on the blue light of the stream the barges lie anchored under the moon. On icegreen seas of sunset the moon skims like a curved white sail bellied by the evening wind and bound for some glittering harbor that blue hills circle among the purple archipelagos of cloud. So, in the quivering bubble of my memories the schooners with peaked sails lean athwart the low dark shore; their sails glow apricot-color or glint as white as the salt-bitten shells on the beach and are curved at the tip like gulls' wings: their courses are set for impossible oceans where on the gold imaginary sands they will unload their many-scented freight of very childish dreams. Dark on the blue light of the stream the barges lie anchored under the moon; the wind brings from them to my ears faint creaking of rudder-cords, tiny slappings of waves against their pitch-smeared flanks, to my nose a smell of bales and merchandise the wet familiar smell of harbors and the old arousing fragrance making the muscles ache and the blood seethe and the eyes see the roadsteads and the golden beaches where with singing they would furl the sails of the schooners of childish dreams. On icegreen seas of sunset the moon skims like a curved white sail: had I forgotten the fragrance of old dreams that the smell from the anchored barges can so fill my blood with bitterness that the sight of the scudding moon makes my eyes tingle with salt tears? In the ship's track on the infertile sea now many childish bodies float rotting under the white moon. _Quai des Grands Augustins_ XI _Lua cheia esta noit_ Thistledown clouds cover the whole sky scurry on the southwest wind over the sea and islands; somehow in the sundown the wind has shaken out plumed seed of thistles milkweed asphodel, raked from off great fields of dandelions their ghosts of faded golden springs and carried them in billowing of mist to scurry in moonlight out of the west. They hide the moon the whole sky is grey with them and the waves. They will fall in rain over country gardens where thrushes sing. They will fall in rain down long sparsely lighted streets hiss on silvery windowpanes moisten the lips of girls leaning out to stare after the footfalls of young men who splash through the glimmering puddles with nonchalant feet. They will slap against the windows of offices where men in black suits shaped like pears rub their abdomens against frazzled edges of ledgers. They will drizzle over new-plowed fields wet the red cheeks of men harrowing and a smell of garlic and clay will steam from the new-sowed land and sharp-eared young herdsmen will feel in the windy rain lisp of tremulous love-makings interlaced soundless kisses impact of dead springs nuzzling tremulous at life in the red sundown. Shining spring rain O scud steaming up out of the deep sea full of portents of sundown and islands, beat upon my forehead beat upon my face and neck glisten on my outstretched hands, run bright lilac streams through the clogged channels of my brain corrode the clicking cogs the little angles the small mistrustful mirrors scatter the shrill tiny creaking of mustnot darenot cannot spatter the varnish off me that I may stand up my face to the wet wind and feel my body and drenched salty palpitant April reborn in my flesh. I would spit the dust out of my mouth burst out of these stiff wire webs supple incautious like the crocuses that spurt up too soon their saffron flames and die gloriously in late blizzards and leave no seed. _Off Pico_ XII Out of the unquiet town seep jagged barkings lean broken cries unimaginable silent writhing of muscles taut against strangling heavy fetters of darkness. On the pool of moonlight clots and festers a great scum of worn-out sound. (Elagabalus, Alexander looked too long at the full moon; hot blood drowned them cold rivers drowned them.) Float like pondflowers on the dead face of darkness cold stubs of lusts names that glimmer ghostly adrift on the slow tide of old moons waned. (Lais of Corinth that Holbein drew drank the moon in a cup of wine; with the flame of all her lovers' pain she seared a sign on the tombs of the years.) Out of the voiceless wrestle of the night flesh rasping harsh on flesh a tune on a shrill pipe shimmers up like a rocket blurred in the fog of lives curdled in the moon's glare, staggering up like a rocket into the steely star-sharpened night above the stagnant moon-marshes the song throbs soaring and dies. (Semiramis, Zenobia lay too long in the moon's glare; their yearning grew sere and they died and the flesh of their empires died.) On the pool of moonlight clots and festers a great scum of worn-out lives. No sound but the panting unsatiated breath that heaves under the huge pall the livid moon has spread above the housetops. I rest my chin on the window-ledge and wait. There are hands about my throat. Ah Bilkis, Bilkis where the jangle of your camel bells? Bilkis when out of Saba lope of your sharp-smelling dromedaries will bring the unnameable strong wine you press from the dazzle of the zenith over the shining sand of your desert the wine you press there in Saba? Bilkis your voice loud above the camel bells white sword of dawn to split the fog, Bilkis your small strong hands to tear the hands from about my throat. Ah Bilkis when out of Saba? _Pera Palace_ * * * * * Transcribers' note: The original spelling has been retained. Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). 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