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_