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.