A Pushcart at the Curb

by John Dos Passos

The full moon soars above the misty street
filling the air with a shimmer of silver.
Roofs and chimney-pots cut silhouettes
of dark against the milk-washed sky!
O moon fast waning!

Seems only a night ago you hung
a shallow cup of topaz-colored glass
that tilted towards my feverish dry lips
brimful of promise in the flaming west:
O moon fast waning!

And each night fuller and colder, moon,
the silver has welled up within you; still I
I have not drunk, only the salt tide
of parching desires has welled up within me:
only you have attained, waning moon.

The moon soars white above the stony street,
wan with fulfilment. O will the tide
of yearning ebb with the moon's ebb
leaving me cool darkness and peace
with the moon's waning?

Madrid

III

The shrill wind scatters the bloom
of the almond trees
but under the bark of the shivering poplars
the sap rises
and on the dark twigs of the planes
buds swell.

Out in the country
along soggy banks of ditches
among busy sprouting grass
there are dandelions.
Under the asphalt
under the clamorous paving-stones
the earth heaves and stirs
and all the blind live things
expand and writhe.

Only the dead
lie still in their graves,
stiff, heiratic,
only the changeless dead
lie without stirring.

Spring is not a good time
for the dead.