J.

It would be fun, you said,
sitting two years ago at this same table,
at this same white marble cafe table,
if people only knew what fun it would be
to laugh the hatred out of soldiers' eyes ...

--If I drink beer with my enemy,
you said, and put your lips to the long glass,
and give him what he wants, if he wants it so hard
that he would kill me for it,
I rather think he'd give it back to me--
You laughed, and stretched your long legs out across the floor.

I wonder in what mood you died,
out there in that great muddy butcher-shop,
on that meaningless dicing-table of death.

Did you laugh aloud at the futility,
and drink death down in a long draught,
as you drank your beer two years ago
at this same white marble cafe table?
Or had the darkness drowned you?

_Cafe Oro del Rhin_
_Plaza de Santa Ana_

VII

Down the road
against the blue haze
that hangs before the great ribbed forms of the mountains
people come home from the fields;
they pass a moment in relief
against the amber frieze of the sunset
before turning the bend
towards the twinkling smoke-breathing village.

A boy in sandals with brown dusty legs
and brown cheeks where the flush of evening
has left its stain of wine.
A donkey with a jingling bell
and ears askew.
Old women with water jars
of red burnt earth.
Men bent double under burdens of faggots
that trail behind them the fragrance
of scorched uplands.
A child tugging at the end of a string
a much inflated sow.
A slender girl who presses to her breast
big bluefrilled cabbages.
And a shepherd in the clinging rags of his cloak
who walks with lithe unhurried stride
behind the crowded backs of his flock.

The road is empty
only the swaying tufts of oliveboughs
against the fading sky.

Down on the steep hillside
a man still follows the yoke
of lumbering oxen
plowing the heavy crimson-stained soil
while the chill silver mists
steal up about him.

I stand in the empty road
and feel in my arms and thighs
the strain of his body
as he leans far to one side
and wrenches the plow from the furrow,
feel my blood throb in time to his slow careful steps
as he follows the plow in