E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

Books by John Dos Passos
NOVELS:
Three Soldiers
One Man's Initiation
Streets of Night
(In Preparation)
ESSAYS:
Rosinante to the Road Again
POEMS:
A Pushcart at the Curb

A PUSHCART AT THE CURB
JOHN DOS PASSOS

A PUSHCART
AT THE CURB

BY
JOHN DOS PASSOS

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1922,
By George H. Doran Company

A Pushcart at the Curb. I
Printed in the United States of America
TO THE MEMORY
OF
WRIGHT McCORMICK
WHO TUMBLED OFF A MOUNTAIN
IN MEXICO

My verse is no upholstered chariot
Gliding oil-smooth on oiled wheels,
No swift and shining modern limousine,
But a pushcart, rather.

A crazy creaking pushcart, hard to push
Round corners, slung on shaky patchwork wheels,
That jolts and jumbles over the cobblestones
Its very various lading:

A lading of Spanish oranges, Smyrna figs,
Fly-specked apples, perhaps of the Hesperides,
Curious fruits of the Indies, pepper-sweet ...
Stranger, choose and taste.

Dolo

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For permission to reprint certain of the poems in this volume, thanks are due
The Bookman, The Dial, Vanity Fair, The Measure, and The New York Evening Post.

CONTENTS

WINTER IN CASTILE

The promiscuous wind wafts idly from the quays
A smell of ships and curious woods and casks
And a sweetness from the gorse on the flowerstand
And brushes with his cool careless cheek the cheeks
Of those on the street; mine, an old gnarled man's,
The powdered cheeks of the girl who with faded eyes
Stands in the shadow; a sailor's scarred brown cheeks,
And a little child's, who walks along whispering
To her sufficient self.

O promiscuous wind.
Bordeaux

I

A long grey street with balconies.
Above the gingercolored grocer's shop
trail pink geraniums
and further up a striped mattress
hangs from a window
and the little wooden cage
of a goldfinch.

Four blind men wabble down the street
with careful steps on the rounded cobbles
scraping with violin and flute
the interment of a tune.

People gather:
women with market-baskets
stuffed with green vegetables,
men with blankets on their shoulders
and brown sunwrinkled faces.

Pipe the flutes, squeak the violins;
four blind men in a row
at the interment of a tune ...
But on the plate
coppers clink
round brown pennies
a merry music at the funeral,
penny swigs of wine
penny gulps of gin
peanuts and hot roast potatoes
red disks of sausage
tripe steaming in the corner shop ...

And overhead
the sympathetic finch
chirps and trills
approval.

Calle de Toledo, Madrid

II

A boy with rolled up shirtsleeves
turns the handle.
Grind, grind.
The black sphere whirls
above a charcoal fire.
Grind, grind.
The boy sweats and grits his teeth and turns
while a man blows up the coals.
Grind, grind.
Thicker comes the blue curling smoke,
the moka-scented smoke
heavy with early morning
and the awakening city
with click-clack click-clack on the cobblestones
and the young winter sunshine
advancing inquisitively
across the black and white tiles of my bedroom floor.
Grind, grind.
The coffee is done.
The boy rubs his arms and yawns,
and the sphere and the furnace are trundled away
to be set up at another café.

A poor devil
whose dirty ashen white body shows through his rags
sniffs sensually
with dilated nostrils
the heavy coffee-fragrant smoke,
and turns to sleep again
in the feeble sunlight of the greystone steps.

Calle Espoz y Mina

III

Women are selling tuberoses in the square,
and sombre-tinted wreaths
stiffly twined and crinkly
for this is the day of the dead.

Women are selling tuberoses in the square.
Their velvet odor fills the street
somehow stills the tramp of feet;
for this is the day of the dead.

Their presence is heavy about us
like the velvet black scent of the flowers:
incense of pompous interments,
patter of monastic feet,
drone of masses drowsily said
for the thronging dead.

Women are selling tuberoses in the square
to cover the tombs of the envious dead
and shroud them again in the lethean scent
lest the dead should remember.

Difuntos; Madrid

IV

Above the scuffling footsteps of crowds
the clang of trams
the shouts of newsboys
the stridence of wheels,
very calm,
floats the sudden trill of a pipe
three silvery upward notes
wistfully quavering,
notes a Thessalian shepherd might have blown
to call his sheep
in the emerald shade
of Tempe,
notes that might have waked the mad women sleeping
among pinecones in the hills
and stung them to headlong joy
of the presence of their mad Iacchos,
notes like the glint of sun
making jaunty the dark waves of Tempe.

In the street an old man is passing
wrapped in a dun brown mantle
blowing with bearded lips on a shining panpipe
while he trundles before him
a grindstone.

The scissors grinder.

Calle Espoz y Mina

V

Rain slants on an empty square.

Across the expanse of cobbles
rides an old shawl-muffled woman
black on a donkey with pert ears
that places carefully
his tiny sharp hoofs
as if the cobbles were eggs.
The paniers are full
of bright green lettuces
and purple cabbages,
and shining red bellshaped peppers,
dripping, shining, a band in marchtime,
in the grey rain,
in the grey city.

Plaza Santa Ana

VI
BEGGARS

The fountain some dead king put up,
conceived in pompous imageries,
piled with mossgreened pans and centaurs
topped by a prudish tight-waisted Cybele
(Cybele the many-breasted mother of the grain)
spurts with a solemn gurgle of waters.

Where the sun is warmest
their backs against the greystone basin
sit, hoarding every moment of the palefaced sun,
(thy children Cybele)
Pan a bearded beggar with blear eyes;
his legs were withered by a papal bull,
those shaggy legs so nimble to pursue
through groves of Arcadian myrtle
the nymphs of the fountains and valleys;
a young Faunus with soft brown face
and dirty breast bared to the sun;
the black hair crisps about his ears
with some grace yet;
a little barefoot Eros
crouching to scratch his skinny thighs
who stares with wide gold eyes aghast
at the yellow shiny trams that clatter past.

All day long they doze in the scant sun
and watch the wan leaves rustle to the ground
from the yellowed limetrees of the avenue.
They are still thine Cybele
nursed at thy breast;
(like a woman's last foster-children
that still would suck grey withered dugs).
They have not scorned thy dubious bounty
for stridence of grinding iron
and pale caged lives
made blind by the dust of toil
to coin the very sun to gold.

Plaza de Cibeles

VII

Footsteps
and the leisurely patter of rain.

Beside the lamppost in the alley
stands a girl in a long sleek shawl
that moulds vaguely to the curves
of breast and arms.
Her eyes are in shadow.

A smell of frying fish;
footsteps of people going to dinner
clatter eagerly through the lane.
A boy with a trough of meat on his shoulder
turns by the lamppost,
his steps drag.
The green light slants
in the black of his eyes.
Her eyes are in shadow.

Footsteps of people going to dinner
clatter eagerly; the rain
falls with infinite nonchalance ...
a man turns with a twirl of moustaches
and the green light slants on his glasses
on the round buttons of his coat.
Her eyes are in shadow.

A woman with an umbrella
keeps her eyes straight ahead
and lifts her dress
to avoid the mud on the pavingstones.

An old man stares without fear
into the eyes of the girl
through the stripes of the rain.
His steps beat faster and he sniffs hard suddenly
the smell of dinner and frying fish.
Was it a flame of old days
expanding in his cold blood,
or a shiver of rigid graves,
chill clay choking congealing?

Beside the lamppost in the alley
stands a girl in a long sleek shawl
that moulds vaguely to the curves
of breast and arms.

Calle del Gato

VIII

A brown net of branches
quivers above silver trunks of planes.
Here and there
a late leaf flutters
its faint death-rattle in the wind.
Beyond, the sky burns fervid rose
like red wine held against the sun.

Schoolboys are playing in the square
dodging among the silver tree-trunks
collars gleam and white knees
as they romp shrilly.

Lamps bloom out one by one
like jessamine, yellow and small.
At the far end a church's dome
flat deep purple cuts the sky.

Schoolboys are romping in the square
in and out among the silver tree-trunks
out of the smoked rose shadows
through the timid yellow lamplight ...
Socks slip down
fingermarks smudge white collars;
they run and tussle in the shadows
kicking the gravel with muddied boots
with cheeks flushed hotter than the sky
eyes brighter than the street-lamps
with fingers tingling and breath fast:
banqueters early drunken
on the fierce cold wine of the dead year.

Paseo de la Castellana

IX

Green against the livid sky
in their square dun-colored towers
hang the bronze bells of Castile.
In their unshakeable square towers
jutting from the slopes of hills
clang the bells of all the churches
the dustbrown churches of Castile.

How they swing the green bronze bells
athwart olive twilights of Castile
till their fierce insistant clangour
rings down the long plowed slopes
breaks against the leaden hills
whines among the trembling poplars
beside sibilant swift green rivers.

O you strong bells of Castile
that commanding clang your creed
over treeless fields and villages
that huddle in arroyos, gleaming
orange with lights in the greenish dusk;
can it be bells of Castile,
can it be that you remember?

Groans there in your bronze green curves
in your imperious evocation
stench of burnings, rattling screams
quenched among the crackling flames?
The crowd, the pile of faggots in the square,
the yellow robes.... Is it that
bells of Castile that you remember?

Toledo——Madrid

X

The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez.
The speeding dark-green water mirrors the old red walls
and the balustrades and close-barred windows of the palace;
and on the other bank three stooping washerwomen
whose bright red shawls and piles of linen gleam in the green,
the swirling green where shimmer the walls of Aranjuez.

There's smoke in the gardens of Aranjuez
smoke of the burning of the years' dead leaves;
the damp paths rustle underfoot
thick with the crisp broad leaves of the planes.

The tang of the smoke and the reek of the box
and the savor of the year's decay
are soft in the gardens of Aranjuez
where the fountains fill silently with leaves
and the moss grows over the statues and busts
clothing the simpering cupids and fauns
whose stone eyes search the empty paths
for the rustling rich brocaded gowns
and the neat silk calves of the halcyon past.

The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez.
And slipping by mirrors the brown-silver trunks of the planes and the hedges
of box and spires of cypress and alleys of yellowing elms;
and on the other bank three grey mules pulling a cart
loaded with turnips, driven by a man in a blue woolen sash
who strides along whistling and does not look towards Aranjuez.

XI

Beyond ruffled velvet hills
the sky burns yellow like a candle-flame.

Sudden a village
roofs against the sky
leaping buttresses
a church
and a tower utter dark like the heart
of a candleflame.

Swing the bronze-bells
uncoiling harsh slow sound through the dusk
that growls out in the conversational clatter
Of the trainwheels and the rails.

A hill humps unexpectedly to hide
the tower erect like a pistil
in the depths of the tremendous flaming
flower of the west.

Getafe

XII

Genteel noise of Paris hats
and beards that tilt this way and that.
Mirrors create on either side
infinities of chandeliers.

The orchestra is tuning up:
Twanging of the strings of violins
groans from cellos
toodling of flutes.

Legs apart, with white fronts
the musicians stand
amiably as pelicans.

Tap. Tap. Tap.
With a silken rustle beards, hats
sink back in appropriate ecstasy.
A little girl giggles.
Crystals of infinities of chandeliers
tremble in the first long honey-savored chord.

From under a wide black hat
curving just to hide her ears
peers the little face of Juliet
of all child lovers
who loved in impossible gardens
among roses huge as moons
and twinkling constellations of jessamine,
Juliet, Isabel, Cressida,
and that unknown one who went forth at night
wandering the snarling streets of Jerusalem.

She presses her handkerchief to her mouth
to smother her profane giggling.
Her skin is browner than the tone of cellos,
flushes like with pomegranate juice.

... The moist laden air of a garden in Granada,
spice of leaves bruised by the sun;
she sits in a dress of crimson brocade
dark as blood under the white moon
and watches the ripples spread
in the gurgling fountain;
her lashes curve to her cheeks
as she stares wide-eyed
lips drawn against the teeth and trembling;
gravel crunches down the path;
brown in a crimson swirl
she stands with full lips
head tilted back ... O her small breasts
against my panting breast.

Clapping. Genteel noise of Paris hats
and beards that tilt this way and that.

Her face lost in infinities of glittering chandeliers.

Ritz

XIII

There's a sound of drums and trumpets
above the rumble of the street.
(Run run run to see the soldiers.)
All alike all abreast keeping time
to the regimented swirl
of the glittering brass band.

The café waiters are craning at the door
the girl in the gloveshop is nose against the glass.
O the glitter of the brass
and the flutter of the plumes
and the tramp of the uniform feet!
Run run run to see the soldiers.

The boy with a tray
of pastries on his head
is walking fast, keeping time;
his white and yellow cakes are trembling in the sun
his cheeks are redder
and his bluestriped tunic streams
as he marches to the rum tum of the drums.
Run run run to see the soldiers.

The milkman with his pony
slung with silvery metal jars
schoolboys with their packs of books
clerks in stiff white collars
old men in cloaks
try to regiment their feet
to the glittering brass beat.
Run run run to see the soldiers.

Puerta del Sol

XIV

Night of clouds
terror of their flight across the moon.
Over the long still plains
blows a wind out of the north;
a laden wind out of the north
rattles the leaves of the liveoaks
menacingly and loud.

Black as old blood on the cold plain
close throngs spread to beyond lead horizons
swaying shrouded crowds
and their rustle in the knife-keen wind
is like the dry death-rattle of the winter grass.

(Like mouldered shrouds the clouds fall
from the crumbling skull of the dead moon.)

Huge, of grinning brass
steaming with fresh stains
their God
gapes with smudged expectant gums
above the plain.

Flicker through the flames of the wide maw
rigid square bodies of men
opulence of childbearing women
slimness of young men, and girls
with small curved breasts.

(Loud as musketry rattles the sudden laughter of the dead.)

Thicker hotter the blood drips
from the cold brass lips.

Swift over grainless fields
swift over shellplowed lands
ever leaner swifter darker
bay the hounds of the dead,
before them drive the pale ones
white limbs scarred and blackened
laurel crushed in their cold fingers,
the spark quenched in their glazed eyes.

Thicker hotter the blood drips
from the avenging lips
of the brass God;
(and rattling loud as musketry
the laughter of the unsated dead).

The clouds have blotted the haggard moon.
A harsh wind shrills from the cities of the north
Ypres, Lille, Liège, Verdun,
and from the tainted valleys
the cross-scarred hills.
Over the long still plains
the wind out of the north
rattles the leaves of the liveoaks.

Cuatro Caminos

XV

The weazened old woman without teeth
who shivers on the windy street corner
displays her roasted chestnuts invitingly
like marriageable daughters.

Calle Atocha

XVI
NOCHEBUENA

The clattering streets are bright with booths
lighted by balancing candleflames
ranged with figures in painted clay,
Virgins adoring and haloed bambinos,
St. Joseph at his joiner's bench
Judean shepherds and their sheep
camels of the Eastern kings.

Esta noche es noche buena
nadie piensa a dormir.

The streets resound with dancing
and chortle of tambourines,
strong rhythm of dancing
drumming of tambourines.

Flicker through the greenish lamplight
of the clattering cobbled streets
flushed faces of men
women in mantillas
children with dark wide eyes,
teeth flashing as they sing:

La santa Virgen es en parto
a las dos va desparir.
Esta noche es noche buena
nadie piensa a dormir.

Beetred faces of women
whose black mantillas have slipped
from their sleek and gleaming hair,
streaming faces of men.

With click of heels on the pavingstones
boys in tunics are dancing
eyes under long black lashes
flash as they dance to the drum
of tambourines beaten with elbow and palm.
A flock of girls comes running
squealing down the street.

Boys and girls are dancing
flushed and dripping dancing
to the beat on drums and piping
on flutes and jiggle
of the long notes of accordions
and the wild tune swirls and sweeps
along the frosty streets,
leaps above the dark stone houses
out among the crackling stars.

Esta noche es noche buena
nadie piensa a dormir.

In the street a ragged boy
too poor to own a tambourine
slips off his shoes and beats them together
to the drunken reeling time,
dances on his naked feet.

Esta noche es noche buena
nadie piensa a dormir.

Madrid

XVII

The old strong towers the Moors built
on the ruins of a Roman camp
have sprung into spreading boistrous foam
of daisies and alyssum flowers,
and sprout of clover and veiling grass
from out of the cracks in the tawny stones
makes velvet soft the worn stairs
and grooved walks where clanked the heels
of the grave mailed knights who had driven and killed
the darkskinned Moors,
and where on silken knees their sons
knelt on the nights of the full moon
to vow strange deeds for their lady's grace.

The old strong towers are crumbled and doddering now
and sit like old men smiling in the sun.

About them clamber the giggling flowers
and below the sceptic sea gently
laughing in daisywhite foam on the beach
rocks the ships with flapping sails
that flash white to the white village on the shore.

On a wall where the path is soft with flowers
the brown goatboy lies, his cap askew
and whistles out over the beckoning sea
the tune the village band jerks out,
a shine of brass in the square below:
a swaggering young buck of a tune
that slouches cap on one side, cigarette
at an impudent tilt, out past the old
toothless and smilingly powerless towers,
out over the ever-youthful sea
that claps bright cobalt hands in time
and laughs along the tawny beaches.

Denia

XVIII

How fine to die in Denia
young in the ardent strength of sun
calm in the burning blue of the sea
in the stabile clasp of the iron hills;
Denia where the earth is red
as rust and hills grey like ash.
O to rot into the ruddy soil
to melt into the omnipotent fire
of the young white god, the flamegod the sun,
to find swift resurrection
in the warm grapes born of earth and sun
that are crushed to must under the feet
of girls and lads,
to flow for new generations of men
a wine full of earth
of sun.

XIX

The road winds white among ashen hills
grey clouds overhead
grey sea below.
The road clings to the strong capes
hangs above the white foam-line
of unheard breakers
that edge with lace the scarf of the sea
sweeping marbled with sunlight
to the dark horizon
towards which steering intently
like ducks with red bellies
swim the black laden steamers.

The wind blows the dust of the road
and whines in the dead grass
and is silent.

I can hear my steps
and the clink of coins in one pocket
and the distant hush of the sea.

On the highroad to Villajoyosa

XX
SIERRA GUADARRAMA
TO J. G. P.

The greyish snow of the pass
is starred with the sad lilac
of autumn crocuses.

Hissing among the brown leaves
of the scruboaks
bruising the tender crocus petals
a sleetgust sweeps the pass.

The air is calm again.
Under a bulging sky motionless overhead
the mountains heave velvet black
into the cloudshut distance.

South the road winds
down a wide valley
towards stripes of rain
through which shine straw yellow
faint as a dream
the rolling lands of New Castile.

A fresh gust whines through the snowbent grass
pelting with sleet the withering crocuses,
and rustles the dry leaves of the scruboaks
with a sound as of gallop of hoofs
far away on the grey stony road
a sound as of faintly heard cavalcades
of old stern kings
climbing the cold iron passes
stopping to stare with cold hawkeyes
at the pale plain.

Puerto de Navecerrada

XXI

Soft as smoke are the blue green pines
in the misty lavender twilight
yellow as flame the flame-shaped poplars
whose dead leaves fall
vaguely spinning through the tinted air
till they reach the brownish mirror of the stream
where they are borne a tremulous pale fleet
over gleaming ripples to the sudden dark
beneath the Roman bridge.

Forever it stands the Roman bridge
a firm strong arch in the purple mist
and ever the yellow leaves are swirled
into the darkness beneath
where echoes forever the tramp of feet
of the weary feet that bore
the Eagles and the Law.

And through the misty lavender twilight
the leaves of the poplars fall and float
with the silent stream to the deep night
beneath the Roman bridge.

Cercedilla

XXII

In the velvet calm of long grey slopes of snow
the silky crunch of my steps.
About me vague dark circles of mountains
secret, listening in the intimate silence.

Bleating of sheep, the bark of a dog
and, dun-yellow in the snow
a long flock straggles.
Crying of lambs,
twitching noses of snowflecked ewes,
the proud curved horns of a regal broadgirthed ram,
yellow backs steaming;
then, tails and tracks in the snow,
and the responsible lope of the dog
who stops with a paw lifted to look back
at the baked apple face of the shepherd.

Cercedilla

XXIII
JULIET

You were beside me on the stony path
down from the mountain.

And I was the rain that lashed such flame into your cheeks
and the sensuous rolling hills
where the mists clung like garments.

I was the sadness that came out of the languid rain
and the soft dove-tinted hills
and choked you with the harsh embrace of a lover
so that you almost sobbed.

Siete Picos

XXIV

When they sang as they marched in step
on the long path that wound to the valley
I followed lonely in silence.

When they sat and laughed by the hearth
where our damp clothes steamed in the flare
of the noisy prancing flames
I sat still in the shadow
for their language was strange to me.

But when as they slept I sat
and watched by the door of the cabin
I was not lonely
for they lay with quiet faces
stroked by the friendly tongues
of the silent firelight
and outside the white stars swarmed
like gnats about a lamp in autumn
an intelligible song.

Cercedilla

XXV

I lie among green rocks
on the thyme-scented mountain.
The thistledown clouds and the sky
grey-white and grey-violet
are mirrored in your dark eyes
as in the changing pools of the mountain.

I have made for your head
a wreath of livid crocuses.
How strange they are the wan lilac crocuses
against your dark smooth skin
in the intense black of your wind-towseled hair.

Sleet from the high snowfields
snaps a lash down the mountain
bruising the withered petals
of the last crocuses.

I am alone in the swirling mist
beside the frozen pools of the mountain.

La Maliciosa

XXVI

Infinities away already
are your very slender body
and the tremendous dark of your eyes
where once beyond the laughingness of childhood,
came a breath of jessamine prophetic of summer,
a sudden flutter of yellow butterflies
above dark pools.

Shall I take down my books
and weave from that glance a romance
and build tinsel thrones for you
out of old poets' fancies?

Shall I fashion a temple about you
where to burn out my life like frankincense
till you tower dark behind the sultry veil
huge as Isis?

Or shall I go back to childhood
remembering butterflies in sunny fields
to cower with you when the chilling shadow fleets
across the friendly sun?

Bordeaux

XXVII

And neither did Beatrice and Dante ...
But Beatrice they say
was a convention.

November, 1916——February, 1917.

NIGHTS AT BASSANO

I
DIRGE OF THE EMPRESS TAITU
OF ABYSSINIA

And when the news of the Death of the Empress of that Far Country did come to them, they fashioned of her an Image in doleful wise and poured out Rum and Marsala Sack and divers Liquors such as were procurable in that place into Cannikins to do her Honor and did wake and keen and make moan most piteously to hear. And that Night were there many Marvels and Prodigies observed; the Welkin was near consumed with fire and Spirits and Banashees grumbled and wailed above the roof and many that were in that place hid themselves in Dens and Burrows in the ground. Of the swanlike and grievously melodious Ditties the Minstrels fashioned in that fearsome Night these only are preserved for the Admiration of the Age.

I

Our lady lies on a brave high bed,
On pillows of gold with gold baboons
On red silk deftly embroidered—
O anger and eggs and candlelight—
Her gold-specked eyes have little sight.

Our lady cries on a brave high bed;
The golden light of the candles licks
The crown of gold on her frizzly head—
O candles and angry eggs so white—
Her gold-specked eyes are sharp with fright.

Our lady sighs till the high bed creaks;
The golden candles gutter and sway
In the swirling dark the dark priest speaks—
O his eyes are white as eggs with fright
—Our lady will die twixt night and night.

Our lady lies on a brave high bed;
The golden crown has slipped from her head
On the pillows crimson embroidered—
O baboons writhing in candlelight—
Her gold-specked soul has taken flight.

II
ZABAGLIONE

Champagne-colored
Deepening to tawniness
As the throats of nightingales
Strangled for Nero's supper.

Champagne-colored
Like the coverlet of Dudloysha
At the Hotel Continental.

Thick to the lips and velvety
Scented of rum and vanilla
Oversweet, oversoft, overstrong,
Full of froth of fascination,
Drink to be drunk of Isoldes
Sunk in champagne-colored couches
While Tristans with fair flowing hair
And round cheeks rosy as cherubs
Stand and stretch their arms,
And let their great slow tears
Roll and fall,
And splash in the huge gold cups.

And behind the scenes with his sleeves rolled up,
Grandiloquently
Kurwenal beats the eggs
Into spuming symphonic splendor
Champagne-colored.

Red-nosed gnomes roll and tumble
Tussle and jumble in the firelight
Roll on their backs spinning rotundly,
Out of earthern jars
Gloriously gurgitating,
Wriggling their huge round bellies.

And the air of the cave is heavy
With steaming Marsala and rum
And hot bruised vanilla.

Champagne-colored, one lies in a velvetiness
Of yellow moths stirring faintly tickling wings
One is heavy and full of languor
And sleep is a champagne-colored coverlet,
the champagne-colored stockings of Venus ...
And later
One goes
And pukes beautifully beneath the moon,
Champagne-colored.

II
ODE TO ENNUI

The autumn leaves that this morning danced with the wind,
curtseying in slow minuettes,
giddily whirling in bacchanals,
balancing, hesitant, tiptoe,
while the wind whispered of distant hills,
and clouds like white sails, sailing
in limpid green ice-colored skies,
have crossed the picket fence
and the three strands of barbed wire;
they have leapt the green picket fence
despite the sentry's bayonet.

Under the direction of a corporal
three soldiers in khaki are sweeping them up,
sweeping up the autumn leaves,
crimson maple leaves, splotched with saffron,
ochre and cream,
brown leaves of horse-chestnuts ...
and the leaves dance and curtsey round the brooms,
full of mirth,
wistful of the journey the wind promised them.

This morning the leaves fluttered gaudily,
reckless, giddy from the wind's dances,
over the green picket fence
and the three strands of barbed wire.
Now they are swept up
and put in a garbage can
with cigarette butts
and chewed-out quids of tobacco,
burnt matches, old socks, torn daily papers,
and dust from the soldiers' blankets.

And the wind blows tauntingly
over the mouth of the garbage can,
whispering, Far away,
mockingly, Far away ...

And I too am swept up
and put in a garbage can
with smoked cigarette ash
and chewed-out quids of tobacco;
I am fallen into the dominion
of the great dusty queen ...
Ennui, iron goddess, cobweb-clothed
goddess of all useless things,
of attics cluttered with old chairs
for centuries unsatupon,
of strong limbs wriggling on office stools,
of ancient cab-horses and cabs
that sleep all day in silent sunny squares,
of camps bound with barbed wire,
and green picket fences—
bind my eyes with your close dust
choke my ears with your grey cobwebs
that I may not see the clouds
that sail away across the sky,
far away, tauntingly,
that I may not hear the wind
that mocks and whispers and is gone
in pursuit of the horizon.

III
TIVOLI
TO D. P.

The ropes of the litter creak and groan
As the bearers turn down the steep path;
Pebbles scuttle under slipping feet.
But the Roman poet lies back confident
On his magenta cushions and mattresses,
Thinks of Greek bronzes
At the sight of the straining backs of his slaves.

The slaves' breasts shine with sweat,
And they draw deep breaths of the cooler air
As they lurch through tunnel after tunnel of leaves.
At last, where the spray swirls like smoke,
And the river roars in a cauldron of green,
The poet feels his fat arms quiver
And his eyes and ears drowned and exalted
In the reverberance of the fall.

The ropes of the litter creak and groan,
The embroidered curtains, moist with spray,
Flutter in the poet's face;
Pebbles scuttle under slipping feet
As the slaves strain up the path again,
And the Roman poet lies back confident
Among silk cushions of gold and magenta,
His hands clasped across his mountainous belly,
Thinking of the sibyll and fate,
And gorgeous and garlanded death,
Mouthing hexameters.

But I, my belly full and burning as the sun
With the good white wine of the Alban hills
Stumble down the path
Into the cool green and the roar,
And wonder, and am abashed.

IV
VENICE

The doge goes down in state to the sea
To inspect with beady traders' eyes
New cargoes from Crete, Mytilene,
Cyprus and Joppa, galleys piled
With bales off which in all the days
Of sailing the sea-wind has not blown
The dust of Arabian caravans.

In velvet the doge goes down to the sea.
And sniffs the dusty bales of spice
Pepper from Cathay, nard and musk,
Strange marbles from ruined cities, packed
In unfamiliar-scented straw.
Black slaves sweat and grin in the sun.
Marmosets pull at the pompous gowns
Of burgesses. Parrots scream
And cling swaying to the ochre bales ...

Dazzle of the rising dust of trade
Smell of pitch and straining slaves ...

And out on the green tide towards the sea
Drift the rinds of orient fruits
Strange to the lips, bitter and sweet.

V
ASOLO GATE

The air is drenched to the stars
With fragrance of flowering grape
Where the hills hunch up from the plain
To the purple dark ridges that sweep
Towards the flowery-pale peaks and the snow.

Faint as the peaks in the glister of starlight,
A figure on a silver-tinkling snow-white mule
Climbs the steeply twining stony road
Through murmuring vineyards to the gate
That gaps with black the wan starlight.

The watchman on his three-legged stool
Drowses in his beard, dreams
He is a boy walking with strong strides
Of slender thighs down a wet road,
Where flakes of violet-colored April sky
Have brimmed the many puddles till the road
Is as a tattered path across another sky.

The watchman on his three-legged stool,
Sits snoring in his beard;
His dream is full of flowers massed in meadowland,
Of larks and thrushes singing in the dawn,
Of touch of women's lips and twining hands,
And madness of the sprouting spring ...
His ears a-sudden ring with the shrill cry:
Open watchman of the gate,
It is I, the Cyprian.

—It is ruled by the burghers of this town
Of Asolo, that from sundown
To dawn no stranger shall come in,
Be he even emperor, or doge's kin.
—Open, watchman of the gate,
It is I, the Cyprian.

—Much scandal has been made of late
By wandering women in this town.
The laws forbid the opening of the gate
Till next day once the sun is down.
—Watchman know that I who wait
Am Queen of Jerusalem, Queen
Of Cypress, Lady of Asolo, friend
Of the Doge and the Venetian State.

There is a sound of drums, and torches flare
Dims the star-swarm, and war-horns' braying
Drowns the fiddling of crickets in the wall,
Hoofs strike fire on the flinty road,
Mules in damasked silk caparisoned
Climb in long train, strange shadows in torchlight,
The road that winds to the city gate.

The watchman, fumbling with his keys,
Mumbles in his beard:—Had thought
She was another Cyprian, strange the dreams
That come when one has eaten tripe.
The great gates creak and groan,
The hinges shriek, and the Queen's white mule
Stalks slowly through.

The watchman, in the shadow of the wall,
Looks out with heavy eyes:—Strange,
What cavalcade is this that clatters into Asolo?
These are not men-at-arms,
These ruddy boys with vineleaves in their hair!
That great-bellied one no seneschal
Can be, astride an ass so gauntily!
Virgin Mother! Saints! They wear no clothes!

And through the gate a warm wind blows,
A dizzying perfume of the grape,
And a great throng crying Cypris,
Cyprian, with cymbals crashing and a shriek
Of Thessalian pipes, and swaying of torches,
That smell hot like wineskins of resin,
That flare on arms empurpled and hot cheeks,
And full shouting lips vermillion-red.

Youths and girls with streaming hair
Pelting the night with flowers:
Yellow blooms of Adonis, white
scented stars of pale Narcissus,
Mad incense of the blooming vine,
And carmine passion of pomegranate blooms.

A-sudden all the strummings of the night,
All the insect-stirrings, all the rustlings
Of budding leaves, the sing-song
Of waters brightly gurgling through meadowland,
Are shouting with the shouting throng,
Crying Cypris, Cyprian,
Queen of the seafoam, Queen of the budding year,
Queen of eyes that flame and hands that twine,
Return to us, return from the fields of asphodel.

And all the grey town of Asolo
Is full of lutes and songs of love,
And vows exchanged from balcony to balcony
Across the singing streets ...
But in the garden of the nunnery,
Of the sisters of poverty, daughters of dust,
The cock crows. The cock crows.

The watchman rubs his old ribbed brow:
Through the gate, in silk all dusty from the road,
Into the grey town asleep under the stars,
On tired mules and lean old war-horses
Comes a crowd of quarrelling men-at-arms
After a much-veiled lady with a falcon on her wrist.
—This Asolo? What a nasty silent town
He sends me to, that dull old doge.

And you, watchman, I've told you thrice
That I am Cypress's Queen, Jerusalem's,
And Lady of this dull village, Asolo;
Tend your gates better. Are you deaf,
That you stand blinking at me, pulling at your dirty beard?
You shall be thrashed, when I rule Asolo.
—What strange dreams, mumbled in his beard
The ancient watchman, come from eating tripe.

VI
HARLEQUINADE

Shrilly whispering down the lanes
That serpent through the ancient night,
They, the scoffers, the scornful of chains,
Stride their turbulent flight.

The stars spin steel above their heads
In the shut irrevocable sky;
Gnarled thorn-branches tear to shreds
Their cloaks of pageantry.

A wind blows bitter in the grey,
Chills the sweat on throbbing cheeks,
And tugs the gaudy rags away
From their lean bleeding knees.

Their laughter startles the scarlet dawn
Among a tangled spiderwork
Of girdered steel, and shrills forlorn
And dies in the rasp of wheels.

Whirling like gay prints that whirl
In tatters of squalid gaudiness,
Borne with dung and dust in the swirl
Of wind down the endless street,

With thin lips laughing bitterly,
Through the day smeared in sooty smoke
That pours from each red chimney,
They speed unseemily.

Women with unlustered hair,
Men with huge ugly hands of oil,
Children, impudently stare
And point derisive hands.

Only ... where a barrel organ thrills
Two small peak-chested girls to dance,
And among the iron clatter spills
A swiftening rhythmy song,

They march in velvet silkslashed hose,
Strumming guitars and mellow lutes,
Strutting pointed Spanish toes,
A stately company.

VII
TO THE MEMORY OF DEBUSSY
Good Friday, 1918.

This is the feast of death
We make of our pain God;
We worship the nails and the rod
and pain's last choking breath
and the bleeding rack of the cross.

The women have wept away their tears,
with red eyes turned on death, and loss
of friends and kindred, have left the biers
flowerless, and bound their heads in their blank veils,
and climbed the steep slope of Golgotha; fails
at last the wail of their bereavement,
and all the jagged world of rocks and desert places
stands before their racked sightless faces,
as any ice-sea silent.

This is the feast of conquering death.
The beaten flesh worships the swishing rod.
The lacerated body bows to its God,
adores the last agonies of breath.

And one more has joined the unnumbered
deathstruck multitudes
who with the loved of old have slumbered
ages long, where broods
Earth the beneficent goddess,
the ultimate queen of quietness,
taker of all worn souls and bodies
back into the womb of her first nothingness.

But ours, who in the iron night remain,
ours the need, the pain
of his departing.
He had lived on out of a happier age
into our strident torture-cage.
He still could sing
of quiet gardens under rain
and clouds and the huge sky
and pale deliciousness that is nearly pain.
His was a new minstrelsy:
strange plaints brought home out of the rich east,
twanging songs from Tartar caravans,
hints of the sounds that ceased
with the stilling dawn, wailings of the night,
echoes of the web of mystery that spans
the world between the failing and the rising of the wan daylight
of the sea, and of a woman's hair
hanging gorgeous down a dungeon wall,
evening falling on Tintagel,
love lost in the mist of old despair.

Against the bars of our torture-cage
we beat out our poor lives in vain.
We live on cramped in an iron age
like prisoners of old
high on the world's battlements
exposed until we die to the chilling rain
crouched and chattering from cold
for all scorn to stare at.
And we watch one by one the great
stroll leisurely out of the western gate
and without a backward look at the strident city
drink down the stirrup-cup of fate
embrace the last obscurity.

We worship the nails and the rod
and pain's last choking breath.
We make of our pain God.
This is the feast of death.

VIII
PALINODE OF VICTORY

Beer is free to soldiers
In every bar and tavern
As the regiments victorious
March under garlands to the city square.

Beer is free to soldiers
And lips are free, and women,
Breathless, stand on tiptoe
To see the flushed young thousands in advance.

"Beer is free to soldiers;
Give all to the liberators" ...
Under wreaths of laurel
And small and large flags fluttering, victorious,
They of the frock-coats, with clink of official chains,
Are welcoming with eloquence outpouring
The liberating thousands, the victorious;
In their speaking is a soaring of great phrases,
Balloons of tissue paper,
Hung with patriotic bunting,
That rise serene into the blue,
While the crowds with necks uptilted
Gaze at their upward soaring
Till they vanish in the blue;
And each man feels the blood of life
Rumble in his ears important
With participation in Events.

But not the fluttering of great flags
Or the brass bands blaring, victorious,
Or the speeches of persons in frock coats,
Who pause for the handclapping of crowds,
Not the stamp of men and women dancing,
Or the bubbling of beer in the taverns,—
Frothy mugs free for the victorious—,
Not all the trombone-droning of Events,
Can drown the inextinguishible laughter of the gods.

And they hear it, the old hooded houses,
The great creaking peak-gabled houses,
That gossip and chuckle to each other
Across the clattering streets;
They hear it, the old great gates,
The grey gates with towers,
Where in the changing shrill winds of the years
Have groaned the poles of many various-colored banners.
The poplars of the high-road hear it,
From their trembling twigs comes a dry laughing,
As they lean towards the glare of the city.
And the old hard-laughing paving-stones,
Old stones weary with the weariness
Of the labor of men's footsteps,
Hear it as they quake and clamour
Under the garlanded wheels of the yawning confident cannon
That are dragged victorious through the flutter of the city.

Beer is free to soldiers,
Bubbles on wind-parched lips,
Moistens easy kisses
Lavished on the liberators.

Beer is free to soldiers
All night in steaming bars,
In halls delirious with dancing
That spill their music into thronging streets.

—All is free to soldiers,
To the weary heroes
Who have bled, and soaked
The whole earth in their sacrificial blood,
Who have with their bare flesh clogged
The crazy wheels of Juggernaut,
Freed the peoples from the dragon that devoured them,
That scorched with greed their pleasant fields and villages,
Their quiet delightful places:

So they of the frock-coats, amid wreaths and flags victorious,
To the crowds in the flaring squares,
And a murmurous applause
Rises like smoke to mingle in the sky
With the crashing of the bells.

But, resounding in the sky,
Louder than the tramp of feet,
Louder than the crash of bells,
Louder than the blare of bands, victorious,
Shrieks the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

The old houses rock with it,
And wag their great peaked heads,
The old gates shake,
And the pavings ring with it,
As with the iron tramp of old fighters,
As with the clank of heels of the victorious,
By long ages vanquished.
The spouts in the gurgling fountains
Wrinkle their shiny griffin faces,
Splash the rhythm in their ice-fringed basins—
Of the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

And far up into the inky sky,
Where great trailing clouds stride across the world,
Darkening the spired cities,
And the villages folded in the hollows of hills,
And the shining cincture of railways,
And the pale white twining roads,
Sounds with the stir of quiet monotonous breath
Of men and women stretched out sleeping,
Sounds with the thin wail of pain
Of hurt things huddled in darkness,
Sounds with the victorious racket
Of speeches and soldiers drinking,
Sounds with the silence of the swarming dead—
The inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

IX

O I would take my pen and write
In might of words
A pounding dytheramb
Alight with teasing fires of hate,
Or drone to numbness in the spell
Of old loves long lived away
A drowsy vilanelle.
O I would build an Ark of words,
A safe ciborium where to lay
The secret soul of loveliness.
O I would weave of words in rhythm
A gaudily wrought pall
For the curious cataphalque of fate.

But my pen does otherwise.

All I can write is the orange tinct with crimson
of the beaks of the goose
and of the wet webbed feet of the geese
that crackle the skimming of ice
and curve their white plump necks to
the water in the manure-stained rivulet
that runs down the broad village street;
and of their cantankerous dancings and hissings,
with beaks tilted up, half open
and necks stiffly extended;
and the curé's habit blowing in the stinging wind
and his red globular face
like a great sausage burst in the cooking
that smiles
as he takes the shovel hat off his head with a gesture,
the hat held at arm's length,
sweeping a broad curve, like a censor well swung;
and, beyond the last grey gabled house in the village,
the gaunt Christ
that stretches bony arms and tortured hands
to embrace the broad lands leprous with cold
the furrowed fields and the meadows
and the sprouting oats
ghostly beneath the grey bitter blanket of hoarfrost.

Sausheim

X

In a hall on Olympus we held carouse,
Sat dining through the warm spring night,
Spilling of the crocus-colored wine
Glass after brimming glass to rouse
The ghosts that dwell in books to flight
Of word and image that, divine,
In the draining of a glass would tear
The lies from off reality,
And the world in gaudy chaos spread
Naked-new in the throbbing flare
Of songs of long-fled spirits;—free
For the wanderer devious roads to tread.

Names waved as banners in our talk:
Lucretius, his master, all men who to balk
The fear that shrivels us in choking rinds
Have thrown their souls like pollen to the winds,
Erasmus, Bruno who burned in Rome, Voltaire,
All those whose lightning laughter cleaned the air
Of the minds of men from the murk of fear-sprung gods,
And straightened the backs bowed under the rulers' rods.

A hall full of the wine and chant of old songs,
Smelling of lilacs and early roses and night,
Clamorous with the names and phrases of the throngs
Of the garlanded dead, and with glasses pledged to the light
Of the dawning to come ...

O in the morning we would go
Out into the drudging world and sing
And shout down dustblinded streets, hollo
From hill to hill, and our thought fling
Abroad through all the drowsy earth
To wake the sleeper and the worker and the jailed
In walls cemented of lies to mirth
And dancing joy; laughingly unveiled
From the sick mist of fear to run naked and leap
And shake the nations from their snoring sleep.

O in the morning we would go
Fantastically arrayed
In silk and scarlet braid,
In rich glitter like the sun on snow
With banners of orange, vermillion, black,
And jasper-handed swords,
Anklets and tinkling gauds
Of topaz set twistingly, or lac
Laid over with charms of demons' heads
In indigo and gold.
Our going a music bold
Would be, behind us the twanging threads
Of mad guitars, the wail of lutes
In wildest harmony;
Lilting thumping free,
Pipes and kettledrums and flutes
And brazen braying trumpet-calls
Would wake each work-drowsed town
And shake it in laughter down,
Untuning in dust the shuttered walls.

O in the morning we would go
With doleful steps so dragging and slow
And grievous mockery of woe
And bury the old gods where they lay
Sodden drunk with men's pain in the day,
In the dawn's first new burning white ray
That would shrivel like dead leaves the sacred lies,
The avengers, the graspers, the wringers of sighs,
Of blood from men's work-twisted hands, from their eyes
Of tears without hope ... But in the burning day
Of the dawn we would see them brooding to slay,
In a great wind whirled like dead leaves away.

In a hall on Olympus we held carouse,
In our talk as banners waving names,
Songs, phrases of the garlanded dead.

Yesterday I went back to that house ...
Guttered candles where were flames,
Shattered dust-grey glasses instead
Of the fiery crocus-colored wine,
Silence, cobwebs and a mouse
Nibbling nibbling the moulded bread
Those spring nights dipped in vintage divine
In the dawnward chanting of our last carouse.

1918——1919

VAGONES DE TERCERA

Refrain

HARD ON YOUR RUMP
BUMP BUMP
HARD ON YOUR RUMP
BUMP BUMP

I

O the savage munching of the long dark train
crunching up the miles
crunching up the long slopes and the hills
that crouch and sprawl through the night
like animals asleep,
gulping the winking towns
and the shadow-brimmed valleys
where lone trees twist their thorny arms.

The smoke flares red and yellow;
the smoke curls like a long dragon's tongue
over the broken lands.

The train with teeth flashing
gnaws through the piecrust of hills and plains
greedy of horizons.

Alcazar de San Juan

II
TO R. H.

I invite all the gods to dine
on the hard benches of my third class coach
that joggles over brown uplands
dragged at the end of a rattling train.

I invite all the gods to dine,
great gods and small gods, gods of air
and earth and sea, and of the grey land
where among ghostly rubbish heaps and cast-out things
linger the strengthless dead.

I invite all the gods to dine,
Jehovah and Crepitus and Sebek,
the slimy crocodile ... But no;
wait ... I revoke the invitation.

For I have seen you, crowding gods,
hungry gods. You have a drab official look.
You have your pockets full of bills,
claims for indemnity, for incense unsniffed
since men first jumped up in their sleep
and drove you out of doors.

Let me instead, O djinn that sows the stars
and tunes the strings of the violin,
have fifty lyric poets,
not pale parson folk, occasional sonneteers,
but sturdy fellows who ride dolphins,
who need no wine to make them drunk,
who do not fear to meet red death at the meanads' hands
or to have their heads at last
float vine-crowned on the Thracian sea.

Anacreon, a partridge-wing?
A sip of wine, Simonides?
Algy has gobbled all the pastry
and left none for the Elizabethans
who come arm in arm, singing bawdy songs,
smelling of sack, from the Mermaid. Ronsard,
will you eat nothing, only sniff roses?
Those Anthologists have husky appetites!
There's nothing left but a green banana
unless that galleon comes from Venily
with Hillyer breakfasts wrapped in sonnet-paper.

But they've all brought gods with them!
Avaunt! Take them away, O djinn
that paints the clouds and brings in the night
in the rumble and clatter of the train
cadences out of the past ... Did you not see
how each saved a bit out of the banquet
to take home and burn in quiet to his god?