Outside down the purple street
stopping sometimes at a door, breathing deep
the heady wine of sunset, stride with clattering steps
those to whom the time will never come
of work-stiffened unrestless hands.
The rain-swelled clouds of winter roam
like a herd of swine over the town and the dark plain.
The wineshops full of shuffling and talk, tanned faces
bright eyes, moist lips moulding desires
blow breaths of strong wine in the faces of passers-by.
There are guards in the storehouse doors
where are gathered the rich fruits of autumn, the grain
the sweet figs and raisins; sullen blood tingling to madness
they stride by who have not reaped.
Sounds the zambomba.
_Albaicin_
X
The train throbs doggedly
over the gleaming rails
fleeing the light-green flanks of hills
dappled with alternate shadow of clouds,
fleeing the white froth of orchards,
of clusters of apples and cherries in flower,
fleeing the wide lush meadows,
wealthy with cowslips,
and the tramping horses and backward-strained bodies of plowmen,
fleeing the gleam of the sky in puddles and glittering waters
the train throbs doggedly
over the ceaseless rails
spurning the verdant grace
of April's dainty apparel;
so do my desires
spurn those things which are behind
in hunger of horizons.
_Rapido: Valencia--Barcelona_
_1919--1920_
QUAI DE LA TOURNELLE
I
See how the frail white pagodas of blossom
stand up on the great green hills
of the chestnuts
and how the sun has burned the wintry murk
and all the stale odor of anguish
out of the sky
so that the swollen clouds bellying with sail
can parade in pomp like white galleons.
And they move the slow plumed clouds
above the spidery grey webs of cities
above fields full of golden chime
of cowslips
above warbling woods where the ditches
are wistfully patined
with primroses pale as the new moon
above hills all golden with gorse
and gardens frothed
to the brim of their grey stone walls
with apple bloom, cherry bloom,
and the raspberry-stained bloom of peaches and almonds.
So do the plumed clouds sail
swelling with satiny pomp of parade
towards somewhere far away
where in a sparkling silver sea
full of little flakes of indigo
the great salt waves have heaved and stirred
into blossoming of foam,
and lifted on the rush of the warm wind
towards the gardens and the spring-mad cities of the shore
Aphrodite Aphrodite is reborn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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