red. The sky
a pale blue. A wind
hard and dry.

Hanging on the thick ropes,
the two gravediggers
let the coffin heavily
down into the grave.

It struck the bottom with a sharp sound,
solemnly, in the silence.

The sound of a coffin striking the earth
is something unutterably solemn.

The heavy clods broke into dust
over the black coffin.

A white mist of dust rose in the air
out of the deep grave.

And you, without a shadow now, sleep.
Long peace to your bones.
For all time
you sleep a tranquil and a real sleep.

X

THE IBERIAN GOD

Like the cross-bowman,
the gambler in the song,
the Iberian had an arrow for his god
when he shattered the grain with hail
and ruined the fruits of autumn;
and a gloria when he fattened
the barley and the oats
that were to make bread to-morrow.
"God of ruin,
I worship because I wait and because I fear.
I bend in prayer to the earth
a blasphemous heart.

"Lord, through whom I snatch my bread with pain,
I know your strength, I know my slavery.
Lord of the clouds in the east
that trample the country-side,
of dry autumns and late frosts
and of the blasts of heat that scorch the harvests!

"Lord of the iris in the green meadows
where the sheep graze,
Lord of the fruit the worms gnaw
and of the hut the whirlwind shatters,
your breath gives life to the fire in the hearth,
your warmth ripens the tawny grain,
and your holy hand, St. John's eve,
hardens the stone of the green olive.

"Lord of riches and poverty,
Of fortune and mishap,
who gives to the rich luck and idleness,
and pain and hope to the poor!

"Lord, Lord, in the inconstant wheel
of the year I have sown my sowing
that has an equal chance with the coins
of a gambler sown on the gambling-table!

"Lord, a father to-day, though stained with yesterday's blood,
two-faced of love and vengeance,
to you, dice cast into the wind,
goes my prayer, blasphemy and praise!"

This man who insults God in his altars,
without more care of the frown of fate,
also dreamed of paths across the seas
and said: "It is God who walks upon the waters."

Is it not he who put God above war,
beyond fate,
beyond the earth,
beyond the sea and death?

Did he not give the