V
Rain slants on an empty square.
Across the expanse of cobbles
rides an old shawl-muffled woman
black on a donkey with pert ears
that places carefully
his tiny sharp hoofs
as if the cobbles were eggs.
The paniers are full
of bright green lettuces
and purple cabbages,
and shining red bellshaped peppers,
dripping, shining, a band in marchtime,
in the grey rain,
in the grey city.
Plaza Santa Ana
VI
BEGGARS
The fountain some dead king put up,
conceived in pompous imageries,
piled with mossgreened pans and centaurs
topped by a prudish tight-waisted Cybele
(Cybele the many-breasted mother of the grain)
spurts with a solemn gurgle of waters.
Where the sun is warmest
their backs against the greystone basin
sit, hoarding every moment of the palefaced sun,
(thy children Cybele)
Pan a bearded beggar with blear eyes;
his legs were withered by a papal bull,
those shaggy legs so nimble to pursue
through groves of Arcadian myrtle
the nymphs of the fountains and valleys;
a young Faunus with soft brown face
and dirty breast bared to the sun;
the black hair crisps about his ears
with some grace yet;
a little barefoot Eros
crouching to scratch his skinny thighs
who stares with wide gold eyes aghast
at the yellow shiny trams that clatter past.
All day long they doze in the scant sun
and watch the wan leaves rustle to the ground
from the yellowed limetrees of the avenue.
They are still thine Cybele
nursed at thy breast;
(like a woman's last foster-children
that still would suck grey withered dugs).
They have not scorned thy dubious bounty
for stridence of grinding iron
and pale caged lives
made blind by the dust of toil
to coin the very sun to gold.
Plaza de Cibeles