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.

And even in this city park galled with iron rails shrill with the clanging of ironbound wheels on the pavings of the unquiet streets, little children run and dance and sing with spring-madness in the sun, and the frail white pagodas of blossom stand up on the great green hills of the chestnuts and all their tiers of tiny gargoyle faces stick out gold and red-striped tongues in derision of the silly things of men.

Jardin du Luxembourg

II

The shadows make strange streaks and mottled arabesques of violet on the apricot-tinged walks where the thin sunlight lies like flower-petals.

On the cool wind there is a fragrance
indefinable
of strawberries crushed in deep woods.

And the flushed sunlight, the wistful patterns of shadow on gravel walks between tall elms and broad-leaved lindens, the stretch of country, yellow and green, full of little particolored houses, and the faint intangible sky, have lumped my soggy misery, like clay in the brown deft hands of a potter, and moulded a song of it.

Saint Germain-en-Laye

III

In the dark the river spins, Laughs and ripples never ceasing, Swells to gurgle under arches, Swishes past the bows of barges, in its haste to swirl away From the stone walls of the city That has lamps that weight the eddies Down with snaky silver glitter, As it flies it calls me with it Through the meadows to the sea.

I close the door on it, draw the bolts,
Climb the stairs to my silent room;
But through the window that swings open
Comes again its shuttle-song,
Spinning love and night and madness,
Madness of the spring at sea.

IV

The streets are full of lilacs lilacs in boys’ buttonholes lilacs at women’s waists; arms full of lilacs, people trail behind them through the moist night long swirls of fragrance, fragrance of gardens fragrance of hedgerows where they have wandered all the May day where the lovers have held each others hands and lavished vermillion kisses under the portent of the swaying plumes of the funereal lilacs.

The streets are full of lilacs that trail long swirls and eddies of fragrance arabesques of fragrance like the arabesques that form and fade in the fleeting ripples of the jade-green river.

Porte Maillot

V

As a gardener in a pond splendid with lotus and Indian nénuphar wades to his waist in the warm black water stooping to this side and that to cull the snaky stems of the floating white glittering lilies groping to break the harsh stems of the imperious lotus lifting the huge flowers high in a cluster in his hand till they droop against the moon; so I grope through the streets of the night culling out of the pool of the spring-reeking, rain-reeking city gestures and faces.

Place St. Michel

VI
TO A. K. MC C.

This is a garden where through the russet mist of clustered trees and strewn November leaves, they crunch with vainglorious heels of ancient vermillion the dry dead of spent summer’s greens, and stalk with mincing sceptic steps and sound of snuffboxes snapping to the capping of an epigram, in fluffy attar-scented wigs ... the exquisite Augustans.

Tuileries

VII

They come from the fields flushed carrying bunches of limp flowers they plucked on teeming meadows and moist banks scented of mushrooms.

They come from the fields tired
softness of flowers in their eyes
and moisture of rank sprouting meadows.

They stroll back with tired steps lips still soft with the softness of petals voices faint with the whisper of woods; and they wander through the darkling streets full of stench of bodies and clothes and merchandise full of the hard hum of iron things; and into their cheeks that the wind had burned and the sun that kisses burned out on the rustling meadows into their cheeks soft with lazy caresses comes sultry caged breath of panthers fetid, uneasy fury of love sprouting hot in the dust and stench of walls and clothes and merchandise, pent in the stridence of the twilight streets.

And they look with terror in each other’s eyes
and part their hot hands stained with grasses and flowerstalks
and are afraid of their kisses.

VIII
EMBARQUEMENT POUR CYTHERE
AFTER WATTEAU

The mists have veiled the far end of the lake this sullen amber afternoon; our island is quite hidden, and the peaks hang wan as clouds above the ruddy haze.

Come, give your hand that lies so limp, a tuberose among brown oak-leaves; put your hand in mine and let us leave this bank where we have lain the day long.

In the boat the naked oarsman stands. Let us walk faster, or do you fear to tear that brocaded dress in apricot and grey? Love, there are silk cushions in the stern maroon and apple-green, crocus-yellow, crimson, amber-grey.

We will lie and listen to the waves
slap soft against the prow, and watch the boy
slant his brown body to the long oar-stroke.

But, love, we are more beautiful than he. We have forgotten the grey sick yearning nights brushed off the old cobwebs of desire; we stand strong immortal as the slender brown boy who waits to row our boat to the island.

But love how your steps drag.

And what is this bundle of worn brocades I press so passionately to me? Old rags of the past, snippings of Helen’s dress, of Melisande’s, scarfs of old paramours rotted in the grave ages and ages since.

No lake
the ink yawns at me from the writing table.

IX
LA RUE DU TEMPS PASSE

Far away where the tall grey houses fade
A lamp blooms dully through the dusk,
Through the effacing dusk that gently veils
The traceried balconies and the wreaths
Carved above the shuttered windows
Of forgotten houses.

Behind one of the crumbled garden walls
A pale woman sits in drooping black
And stares with uncomprehending eyes
At the thorny angled twigs that bore
Years ago in the moon-spun dusk
One scarlet rose.

In an old high room where the shadows troop
On tiptoe across the creaking boards
A shrivelled man covers endless sheets
Rounding out in his flourishing hand
Sentence after sentence loud
With dead kings’ names.

Looking out at the vast grey violet dusk
A pale boy sits in a window, a book
Wide open on his knees, and fears
With cold choked fear the thronging lives
That lurk in the shadows and fill the dusk
With menacing steps.

Far away the gaslamp glows dull gold
A vague tulip in the misty night.
The clattering drone of a distant tram
Grows loud and fades with a hum of wires
Leaving the street breathless with silence, chill
And the listening houses.

Bordeaux

X

O douce Sainte Genevieve
ramène moi a ta ville, Paris.

In the smoke of morning the bridges
are dusted with orangy sunshine.

Bending their black smokestacks far back muddling themselves in their spiralling smoke the tugboats pass under the bridges and behind them stately gliding smooth like clouds the barges come black barges with blunt prows spurning the water gently gently rebuffing the opulent wavelets of opal and topaz and sapphire, barges casually come from far towns towards far towns unhurryingly bound.

The tugboats shrieks and shrieks again calling beyond the next bend and away. In the smoke of morning the bridges are dusted with orangy sunshine.

O douce Sainte Genevieve
ramène moi a ta ville, Paris.

Big hairy-hoofed horses are drawing carts loaded with flour-sacks, white flour-sacks, bluish in the ruddy flush of the morning streets.

On one cart two boys perch wrestling and their arms and faces glow ruddy against the white flour-sacks as the sun against the flour-white sky.

O douce Sainte Genevieve
ramène moi a ta ville, Paris.

Under the arcade loud as castanettes with steps of little women hurrying to work an old hag who has a mole on her chin that is tufted with long white hairs sells incense-sticks, and the trail of their strangeness lingers in the many-scented streets among the smells of markets and peaches and the must of old books from the quays and the warmth of early-roasting coffee.

The old hag’s incense has smothered the timid scent of wild strawberries and triumphantly mingled with the strong reek from the river of green slime along stonework of docks and the pitch-caulked decks of barges, barges casually come from far towns towards far towns unhurryingly bound.

O douce Sainte Genevieve
ramène moi a ta ville, Paris.

XI
A L’OMBRE DES JEUNES FILLES EN FLEURS

And now when I think of you I see you on your piano-stool finger the ineffectual bright keys and even in the pinkish parlor glow your eyes sea-grey are very wide as if they carried the reflection of mocking black pinebranches and unclimbed red-purple mountains mist-tattered under a violet-gleaming evening.

But chirruping of marriageable girls voices of eager, wise virgins, no lamp unlit every wick well trimmed, fill the pinkish parlor chairs, bobbing hats and shrill tinkling teacups in circle after circle about you so that I can no longer see your eyes.

Shall I tear down the pinkish curtains
smash the imitation ivory keyboard
that you may pluck with bare fingers on the strings?

I sit cramped in my chair.
Futility tumbles everlastingly
like great flabby snowflakes about me.

Were they in your eyes, or mine
the tattered mists about the mountains
and the pitiless grey sea?

1919