So. We’ll sit here now and throw pebbles into this water-trickle. Splash the water up! (Splash it up, Sonny!) Laugh! Hit it there deep under the grass. See it splash! Ah, mind, see it splash! It is alive! Throw pieces of broken leaves into it. They’ll pass through. No! Yes--just! Away now for the cows! But-- It’s cold! It’s getting dark. It’s going to rain. No further! III. Oh then, a wreath! Let’s refresh something they used to write well of. Two fern plumes. Strip them to the mid-rib along one side. Bind the tips with a grass stem. Bend and intertwist the stalks at the back. So! Ah! now we are crowned! Now we are a poet! Quickly! A bunch of little flowers for Flossie--the little ones only: a red clover, one blue heal-all, a sprig of bone-set, one primrose, a head of Indian tobacco, this magenta speck and this little lavender! Home now, my mind!-- Sonny’s arms are icy, I tell you-- and have breakfast! EL HOMBRE It’s a strange courage you give me ancient star: Shine alone in the sunrise toward which you lend no part! HERO Fool, put your adventures into those things which break ships-- not female flesh. Let there pass over the mind the waters of four oceans, the airs of four skies! Return hollow-bellied, keen-eyed, hard! A simple scar or two. Little girls will come bringing you roses for your button-hole. LIBERTAD! IGUALDAD! FRATERNIDAD! You sullen pig of a man you force me into the mud with your stinking ash-cart! Brother! --if we were rich we’d stick our chests out and hold our heads high! It is dreams that have destroyed us. There is no more pride in horses or in rein holding. We sit hunched together brooding our fate. Well-- all things turn bitter in the end whether you choose the right or the left way and-- dreams are not a bad thing. CANTHARA The old black-man showed me how he had been shocked in his youth by six women, dancing a set-dance, stark naked below the skirts raised round their breasts: bellies flung forward knees flying! --while his gestures, against the tiled wall of the dingy bath-room, swished with ecstasy to the familiar music of his old emotion. MUJER Oh, black Persian cat! Was not your life already cursed with offspring? We took you for rest to that old Yankee farm,--so lonely and with so many field mice in the long grass-- and you return to us in this condition--! Oh, black Persian cat. SUMMER SONG