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 coupÉs;
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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