A Pushcart at the Curb Part 5

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 ma.s.sed 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 a.s.s 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sion 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 c.o.c.k crows. The c.o.c.k 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 unl.u.s.tered 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 G.o.d; We wors.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+ps the swis.h.i.+ng rod.

The lacerated body bows to its G.o.d, adores the last agonies of breath.

And one more has joined the unnumbered deathstruck mult.i.tudes who with the loved of old have slumbered ages long, where broods Earth the beneficent G.o.ddess, 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, tw.a.n.ging 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 wors.h.i.+p the nails and the rod and pain's last choking breath.

We make of our pain G.o.d.

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.