A Pushcart at the Curb Part 13

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 coc.o.o.ns, moist, motionless, limp as flowers on the inaccessible twigs of the yewtree, Ygdrasil, the untarnished songs.

Will you put your hand in mine pompous street-singer, and start on a quest with me?

For men have cut down the woods where the laurel grew to build streets of frame houses, they have dug in the hills after iron and frightened the troll-king away; at night in the woods no hunter puffs out his cheeks to call to the kill on the hunting-horn.

Now when the kites flaunt bravely their tissue-paper glory in the sunset we will walk together down the darkening streets beyond these tables and the sunset.

We will hear the singing of drunken men and the songs wh.o.r.es sing in their doorways at night and the endless soft crooning of all the mothers, and what words the young men hum when they walk beside the river their arms hot with caresses, their cheeks pressed against their girls' cheeks.

We will lean very close to the quiet lips of the dead and feel in our worn-out flesh perhaps a flutter of wings as they soar from us the untarnished songs.

But the minstrel sings as the pennies clink: _I love the sound of the hunting-horns deep in the woods at night._

O who will go on a quest with me beyond all wide seas all mountain pa.s.ses and climb at last with me among the imperishable branches of the yewtree, Ygdrasil, so that all the limp unuttered songs shall spread their great moth-wings and soar above the craning necks of the chimneys above the tissue-paper kites and the sunset above the diners and their dining-tables, beat upward with strong wing-beats steadily till they can drink the quenchless honey of the moon.

_Place du Tertre_

X

Dark on the blue light of the stream the barges lie anch.o.r.ed under the moon.

On icegreen seas of sunset the moon skims like a curved white sail bellied by the evening wind and bound for some glittering harbor that blue hills circle among the purple archipelagos of cloud.

So, in the quivering bubble of my memories the schooners with peaked sails lean athwart the low dark sh.o.r.e; their sails glow apricot-color or glint as white as the salt-bitten sh.e.l.ls on the beach and are curved at the tip like gulls' wings: their courses are set for impossible oceans where on the gold imaginary sands they will unload their many-scented freight of very childish dreams.

Dark on the blue light of the stream the barges lie anch.o.r.ed under the moon; the wind brings from them to my ears faint creaking of rudder-cords, tiny slappings of waves against their pitch-smeared flanks, to my nose a smell of bales and merchandise the wet familiar smell of harbors and the old arousing fragrance making the muscles ache and the blood seethe and the eyes see the roadsteads and the golden beaches where with singing they would furl the sails of the schooners of childish dreams.

On icegreen seas of sunset the moon skims like a curved white sail: had I forgotten the fragrance of old dreams that the smell from the anch.o.r.ed barges can so fill my blood with bitterness that the sight of the scudding moon makes my eyes tingle with salt tears?

In the s.h.i.+p's track on the infertile sea now many childish bodies float rotting under the white moon.

_Quai des Grands Augustins_

XI _Lua cheia esta noit_

Thistledown clouds cover the whole sky scurry on the southwest wind over the sea and islands; somehow in the sundown the wind has shaken out plumed seed of thistles milkweed asphodel, raked from off great fields of dandelions their ghosts of faded golden springs and carried them in billowing of mist to scurry in moonlight out of the west.

They hide the moon the whole sky is grey with them and the waves.

They will fall in rain over country gardens where thrushes sing.

They will fall in rain down long spa.r.s.ely lighted streets hiss on silvery windowpanes moisten the lips of girls leaning out to stare after the footfalls of young men who splash through the glimmering puddles with nonchalant feet.

They will slap against the windows of offices where men in black suits shaped like pears rub their abdomens against frazzled edges of ledgers.

They will drizzle over new-plowed fields wet the red cheeks of men harrowing and a smell of garlic and clay will steam from the new-sowed land and sharp-eared young herdsmen will feel in the windy rain lisp of tremulous love-makings interlaced soundless kisses impact of dead springs nuzzling tremulous at life in the red sundown.

s.h.i.+ning spring rain O scud steaming up out of the deep sea full of portents of sundown and islands, beat upon my forehead beat upon my face and neck glisten on my outstretched hands, run bright lilac streams through the clogged channels of my brain corrode the clicking cogs the little angles the small mistrustful mirrors scatter the shrill tiny creaking of mustnot darenot cannot spatter the varnish off me that I may stand up my face to the wet wind and feel my body and drenched salty palpitant April reborn in my flesh.

I would spit the dust out of my mouth burst out of these stiff wire webs supple incautious like the crocuses that spurt up too soon their saffron flames and die gloriously in late blizzards and leave no seed.

_Off Pico_

XII

Out of the unquiet town seep jagged barkings lean broken cries unimaginable silent writhing of muscles taut against strangling heavy fetters of darkness.

On the pool of moonlight clots and festers a great sc.u.m of worn-out sound.

(Elagabalus, Alexander looked too long at the full moon; hot blood drowned them cold rivers drowned them.)

Float like pondflowers on the dead face of darkness cold stubs of l.u.s.ts names that glimmer ghostly adrift on the slow tide of old moons waned.

(Lais of Corinth that Holbein drew drank the moon in a cup of wine; with the flame of all her lovers' pain she seared a sign on the tombs of the years.)