Dolo

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For permission to reprint certain of the poems in this volume, thanks are due The Bookman, The Dial, Vanity Fair, The Measure, and The New York Evening Post.

CONTENTS

[p. 13] 

[p. 13]

WINTER IN CASTILE

The promiscuous wind wafts idly from the quays A smell of ships and curious woods and casks And a sweetness from the gorse on the flowerstand And brushes with his cool careless cheek the cheeks Of those on the street; mine, an old gnarled man's, The powdered cheeks of the girl who with faded eyes Stands in the shadow; a sailor's scarred brown cheeks, And a little child's, who walks along whispering To her sufficient self. 

       O promiscuous wind. Bordeaux

I

A long grey street with balconies. Above the gingercolored grocer's shop trail pink geraniums and further up a striped mattress hangs from a window and the little wooden cage of a goldfinch.

Four blind men wabble down the street with careful steps on the rounded cobbles scraping with violin and flute the interment of a tune.

People gather:       women with market-baskets stuffed with green vegetables, men with blankets on their shoulders and brown sunwrinkled faces.

Pipe the flutes, squeak the violins; four blind men in a row at the interment of a tune ... But on the plate coppers clink round brown pennies a merry music at the funeral, penny swigs of wine penny gulps of gin peanuts and hot roast potatoes red disks of sausage tripe steaming in the corner shop ...

And overhead the sympathetic finch chirps and trills approval.

 Calle de Toledo, Madrid

II

 A boy with rolled up 

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