A PUSHCART AT THE CURB

JOHN DOS PASSOS

A PUSHCART

AT THE CURB

BY

JOHN DOS PASSOS

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PUBLISHERS          NEW YORK

Copyright, 1922,

By George H. Doran Company

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

[p. 13]

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.

[p. 65]

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

[p. 109]

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

[p. 139]

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

[p. 163]

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-gate

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.

[p. 185]

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.

One typographical error was changed: Jasdin ----> Jardin du Luxembourg

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Jardin