A Pushcart at the Curb

Excerpt: ...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? Madrid, Caceres, Portugal III Three little harlots with artificial roses in their hair each at a window of a third-class coach on the train from Zafra to the fair. Too much powder and too much paint shining black hair. One sings to the clatter of wheels a swaying unending song that trails across the crimson slopes and the blue ranks of olives and the green ranks of vines. Three little harlots on the train from Zafra to the fair. The plowman drops the traces on the shambling oxen's backs turns his head and stares wistfully after the train. The mule-boy stops his mules shows his white teeth and shouts a word, then urges dejectedly the mules to the road again. The stout farmer on his horse straightens his broad felt hat, makes the horse leap, and waves...