Cactus and pine: Songs of the Southwest

by Sharlot Mabridth Hall

(In the Harqua Hala desert.)

The wild, bare, rock-fanged hills that all day long
Shut in the hand-width valley from the world,
Like wolfish out-posts which no foot might pass,
Creep close as friendly dogs with head on paws
And drowsy eyes that watch the evening fire.
Their sun-baked, tawny brown melts into mist
Of rose and violet and translucent blue,
With gold dust powdered softly through the air
That swims and shimmers as if all the earth
Were carven jewels bathed in golden light.
In the soft dusk the desert seems to pant,
Only half-rested from the burning day;
Yet stirs a little happily to feel
The night wind, cool and gentle, whispering
In the white-flowered mesquite where wild bees hum
Delirious with honey sweets and fragrances;
And through the leafless thorn whose tortured boughs
Were wreathed, men say, to crown the suffering Christ
On his high cross. (And still each Passion Week
The sorrowing tree wears buds like drops of blood
In memory.) With swift, soft whirr of wings
The gray doves flutter down beside the pool,
Cooing their love notes sweet as fairy flutes,
And in the grass the fiddler-crickets chirp.
The spotted night hawk saws his raucous note,
Like some harsh rasp upon an o’er-drawn string;
The squeaking bats drop from the cotton-wood trees,
Dipping and diving round the shining pool
Where night moths hover like moon-elves astray.
It seems the deep blue sky has fallen there
In the blue, star-set water, where the wind
Makes mimic waves that hardly over-toss
The peach-leaf boat on which the dragon fly
Rides sailor-wise to rest his gorgeous wings.
The hot, dry, day-time scent of sun-burned sand
Is drowned in sweetness of the blossoming grape,
And pungent odour of the wax-white cups
Of yerba mansa, hedging the blue pool
With a green wall whose every flower
Blooms twice, once on its tall-leafed stalk, and once
Down where the waves like silver mirrors mix
Its whiteness with the red pomegranate stars.
In the shadow of the plume-branched tamerask
There is a half-hushed, honey-throated call,
And from the cotton-wood’s topmost moonlit bough
Music’s enraptured soul seems waked to answer.
So sweet, so low, so pure, so tender-clear;
So brimmed with joy; so wistful, plaintive-sad;
As if all love o’ the world pulsed in that throat;
As if all pain o’ life beat in the heart below.
It is the mocking bird to his brown mate,
The desert’s vesper song of rest and peace.

DOLORES’ OLLA

In Mexico the fiesta of San Juan, in the heart of June, is a time of sport and pleasure and love-making. The eve of All Soul’s Night in November is a time of universal prayer for the dead. Friendless indeed is the soul for which no word is uttered then, and dearest treasures go, if need be, to buy prayers and candles for the loved one’s rest.

SAN JUAN’S DAY

San Juan’s Day in Guadalupe; the plaza is astir
With caballeros bold and gay and senoritas shy,
And Miguel the alfarero wends through the crowd to her,
Dolores with the dusky eyes as soft as twilit sky.
Dolores ’neath whose lightest touch his heart is like the clay;
Who molds him as he molds his wares upon the whirring wheel;
Oh! may the Saints be good to him on this auspicious day,
And grant him words to tell her all the love a man may feel.
Mi alma, see, this olla—how it flashes in the sun,
And shimmers with the iris of paloma’s dimpled breast!
Lift thou the lid and look within, querida, little one;
My heart lies warm below your gaze as birds lie in the nest.

ALL SOUL’S NIGHT

“Ay de mi! Valgame Dios! Senor, but a moment, stay!
The jar! The olla! Will you buy it? Very little you shall pay.
Look you, burnished green and copper, flecked with waves of rainbow light;
Miguel, best alfarero—Good saints keep his soul tonight!
Miguel made it. Ah! The padre—going to the mass so soon!
Father, wait—a prayer for Miguel! Mary, Mother, grant the boon!—
Senor, gracias! When the aves rise tonight for Miguel’s rest,
Know a woman in the darkness prays that you too may be blest.”

NIGHT IN THE PINES

It were mid-day one had said, with a brighter sun o’erhead,
When a little hush came stealing through the branches swaying low;
Such a space of silence tender as the pause that serves to render
Some sweet music even sweeter in its pulsing after-flow.
The gold-sifted light that rested on the bracken plumes green-crested,
Shimmered faintly into silver on the diamond-dusted firs;
Upward where the mountain lifted one brown shoulder seamed and rifted,
Grew a shadow ’gainst the sky line, softly as the shade that stirs
Lightly o’er a sleeper dreaming;—then the star lamps trimmed and gleaming,
From the dim, blue dome near-bending flashed their jewelled radiance down:
Where the timid aspens quiver gusty wind-puffs start and shiver,
Like the ghosts of wandering night elves rustling through the needles brown.
Night that elsewhere silently lays her spell on land and sea,
Soothing restless souls to quiet in the shadow of her wings,
Here with hushing tone and slow through the rocking pines croons low
Earth-old lullabies as tender as a watching mother sings.
Rest ye, weary hearts and lone; lean ye down against mine own;
Put aside the fret of living and be glad in dreamless sleep;
Lose awhile the vain regretting in the balm of sweet forgetting—
Or remember but the promise that the coming mornings keep.