II. Malaguenas
BODY erect and arm defiantly curved,
she flings small steps to the clack of her castanets,
which snap their rhythm at one, more musical
than the slight scrape of the plectrum on mandoline strings.
She turns and yet so slowly, so haughtily ...
I wonder if she is an Empress masquerading
in this dim-lighted, ill-reputed café.
Click and the rhythm swims to Pedro’s head,
whose features contain the lineaments of appreciation.
Clack and the rhythm swims to Sancha’s head.
Whom then shall she favour with a rose?
Perhaps she will give no look, but flicker
flicker for a moment the darkness of her eyelids
and freeze the heart in Pedro’s body beating.
The rhythm ceases; Pedro is not the favoured one.
A gleam of dagger and muffled fall of a body.
Confetti
LET us sprinkle in the air
Colours, colours everywhere.
Peacock’s eyes in April showers
Plucked in silver-sandalled hours,
Wings of fireflies iridescent,
Jets of drift-wood incandescent.
Let us hurl them to the skies
Ere the pallid dawn arise.
Minion jewel-plumaged birds,
Specks and flecks in dappled herds,
Tangle in your moonlit hair
Whilst you’re smiling unaware.
In the paper fluttering
Pipe-like voices seem to sing,
Little flutes of heron bone,
Tremulously soft in tone
As by eerie wizards played,
Make one wonder, half afraid.
Empty trickle of the breeze
Through the perfumed orangeries
Like a tiptoe of a faun,
Come a-heralding the dawn.
Let us sprinkle in the air
Colours, colours everywhere.
Night of Adolescence
STEEL-COLD without; sheer icicles of air
That hang down perpendicular with blades,
Chimeric poniards, vitrine points of ice
To freeze the spirituous tissues numb.
But in this throbbing, warmly-bosomed room
I sit and drink the fumes of glowing coals,
Allow my limbs to spread in languid ease,
Relaxing as a selfish, pensive cat,
Absorbing warmth into my seething pores
And drowning in a mass of phantom breasts....
The kettle bubbles humanly and croons
A far-off, distance-faded lullaby,
And I forget those frozen stalactites,
Those gushing waterfalls of winter wind,
That sap the brain and turn the blood to snow
Until I suck my breath in sudden gasps.
Within, the heat is curdling into flesh,
Vague, supple limbs to weave a night of lust
And throats lain back to kiss at my desire
White, soft and curving, I may nibble then
Such mad caresses as will flay my lips.
Those tender tendrils curling on the nape
Are coils of anaconda for my hands
To twine in subtly inspissated shapes
To my own delectation; and those eyes
Resign like perfumed stars to my caress.