Part 3

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

_Sausheim_

X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_1918--1919_

VAGONES DE TERCERA

_Refrain_

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

I

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

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

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

_Alcazar de San Juan_

II TO R. H.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Madrid, Caceres, Portugal_

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Sevilla--Merida_

IV

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

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

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

_Misto_

V VIRGEN DE LAS ANGUSTIAS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Granada_

VI TO R. J.

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

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

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

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

_Café Oro del Rhin_ _Plaza de Santa Ana_

VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Lanjaron_

VIII

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

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

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

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

_Granada_

IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Albaicin_

X

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

_Rapido: Valencia--Barcelona_ _1919--1920_

QUAI DE LA TOURNELLE

I

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

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

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

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

_Jardin du Luxembourg_

II

The shadows make strange streaks and mottled arabesques of violet on the apricot-tinged walks where the thin sunlight lies like flower-petals.

On the cool wind there is a fragrance indefinable of strawberries crushed in deep woods.

And the flushed sunlight, the wistful patterns of shadow on gravel walks between tall elms and broad-leaved lindens, the stretch of country, yellow and green, full of little particolored houses, and the faint intangible sky, have lumped my soggy misery, like clay in the brown deft hands of a potter, and moulded a song of it.

_Saint Germain-en-Laye_

III

In the dark the river spins, Laughs and ripples never ceasing, Swells to gurgle under arches, Swishes past the bows of barges, in its haste to swirl away From the stone walls of the city That has lamps that weight the eddies Down with snaky silver glitter, As it flies it calls me with it Through the meadows to the sea.

I close the door on it, draw the bolts, Climb the stairs to my silent room; But through the window that swings open Comes again its shuttle-song, Spinning love and night and madness, Madness of the spring at sea.

IV

The streets are full of lilacs lilacs in boys' buttonholes lilacs at women's waists; arms full of lilacs, people trail behind them through the moist night long swirls of fragrance, fragrance of gardens fragrance of hedgerows where they have wandered all the May day where the lovers have held each others hands and lavished vermillion kisses under the portent of the swaying plumes of the funereal lilacs.

The streets are full of lilacs that trail long swirls and eddies of fragrance arabesques of fragrance like the arabesques that form and fade in the fleeting ripples of the jade-green river.

_Porte Maillot_

V

As a gardener in a pond splendid with lotus and Indian nenuphar wades to his waist in the warm black water stooping to this side and that to cull the snaky stems of the floating white glittering lilies groping to break the harsh stems of the imperious lotus lifting the huge flowers high in a cluster in his hand till they droop against the moon; so I grope through the streets of the night culling out of the pool of the spring-reeking, rain-reeking city gestures and faces.

_Place St. Michel_

VI TO A. K. MC C.

This is a garden where through the russet mist of clustered trees and strewn November leaves, they crunch with vainglorious heels of ancient vermillion the dry dead of spent summer's greens, and stalk with mincing sceptic steps and sound of snuffboxes snapping to the capping of an epigram, in fluffy attar-scented wigs ... the exquisite Augustans.

_Tuileries_

VII

They come from the fields flushed carrying bunches of limp flowers they plucked on teeming meadows and moist banks scented of mushrooms.

They come from the fields tired softness of flowers in their eyes and moisture of rank sprouting meadows.