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_