A Pushcart at the Curb Part 7

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 appet.i.tes!

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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d?

_Madrid, Caceres, Portugal_

III

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

Too much powder and too much paint s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 sh.o.r.e 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.s 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 f.a.ggots 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.