uenchless honey of the moon.

_Place du Tertre_

X

Dark on the blue light of the stream
the barges lie anchored 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 shore;
their sails glow apricot-color
or glint as white as the salt-bitten shells 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 anchored 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 anchored barges
can so fill my blood with bitterness
that the sight of the scudding moon
makes my eyes tingle with salt tears?

In the ship'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.