Esta noche es noche buena
nadie piensa a dormir.
In the street a ragged boy
too poor to own a tambourine
slips off his shoes and beats them together
to the drunken reeling time,
dances on his naked feet.
Esta noche es noche buena
nadie piensa a dormir.
Madrid
XVII
The old strong towers the Moors built
on the ruins of a Roman camp
have sprung into spreading boistrous foam
of daisies and alyssum flowers,
and sprout of clover and veiling grass
from out of the cracks in the tawny stones
makes velvet soft the worn stairs
and grooved walks where clanked the heels
of the grave mailed knights who had driven and killed
the darkskinned Moors,
and where on silken knees their sons
knelt on the nights of the full moon
to vow strange deeds for their lady's grace.
The old strong towers are crumbled and doddering now
and sit like old men smiling in the sun.
About them clamber the giggling flowers
and below the sceptic sea gently
laughing in daisywhite foam on the beach
rocks the ships with flapping sails
that flash white to the white village on the shore.
On a wall where the path is soft with flowers
the brown goatboy lies, his cap askew
and whistles out over the beckoning sea
the tune the village band jerks out,
a shine of brass in the square below:
a swaggering young buck of a tune
that slouches cap on one side, cigarette
at an impudent tilt, out past the old
toothless and smilingly powerless towers,
out over the ever-youthful sea
that claps bright cobalt hands in time
and laughs along the tawny beaches.
Denia