Is it that the queen Astarte
strides across the fallow lands
to fertilize the swelling grapes
amid shrieking of her corybants?

Too much powder and too much paint
shining black hair.
Three little harlots
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

_Sevilla--Merida_

IV

My desires have gone a-hunting,
circle through the fields and sniff along the hedges,
hounds that have lost the scent.

Outside, behind the white swirling patterns of coalsmoke,
hunched fruit-trees slide by
slowly pirouetting,
and poplars and aspens on tiptoe
peer over each other's shoulders
at the long black rattling train;
colts sniff and fling their heels in air
across the dusty meadows,
and the sun now and then
looks with vague interest through the clouds
at the blonde harvest mottled with poppies,
and the Joseph's cloak of fields, neatly sewn together with hedges,
that hides the grisly skeleton
of the elemental earth.

My mad desires
circle through the fields and sniff along the hedges,
hounds that have lost the scent.

_Misto_

V
VIRGEN DE LAS ANGUSTIAS

The street is full of drums
and shuffle of slow moving feet.
Above the roofs in the shaking towers
the bells yawn.

The street is full of drums
and shuffle of slow moving feet.
The flanks of the houses glow
with the warm glow of candles,
and above the upturned faces,
crowned, robed in a cone-shaped robe
of vast dark folds glittering with gold,
swaying on the necks of men, swaying
with the strong throb of drums,
haltingly she advances.

What manner of woman are you,
borne in triumph on the necks of men,
you who look bitterly
at the dead man on your knees,
while your foot in an embroidered slipper
tramples the new moon?

Haltingly she advances,
swaying above the upturned faces
and the shuffling feet.

In the dark unthought-of years
men carried you thus
down streets where drums throbbed
and torches flared,
bore you triumphantly,
mourner and queen,
followed you with shuffling feet
and upturned faces.
You it was who sat
in the swirl of your robes
at the granary door,
and brought the orange maize
black with mildew
or fat with milk,