Would be, behind us the twanging threads Of mad guitars, the wail of lutes In wildest harmony; Lilting thumping free, Pipes and kettledrums and flutes And brazen braying trumpet-calls Would wake each work-drowsed town And shake it in laughter down, Untuning in dust the shuttered walls.

 O in the morning we would go With doleful steps so dragging and slow And grievous mockery of woe And bury the old gods where they lay Sodden drunk with men's pain in the day, In the dawn's first new burning white ray That would shrivel like dead leaves the sacred lies, The avengers, the graspers, the wringers of sighs, Of blood from men's work-twisted hands, from their eyes Of tears without hope ... But in the burning day Of the dawn we would see them brooding to slay, In a great wind whirled like dead leaves away. 

In a hall on Olympus we held carouse, In our talk as banners waving names, Songs, phrases of the garlanded dead.

Yesterday I went back to that house ... Guttered candles where were flames, Shattered dust-grey glasses instead Of the fiery crocus-colored wine, Silence, cobwebs and a mouse       Nibbling nibbling the moulded bread Those spring nights dipped in vintage divine In the dawnward chanting of our last carouse.

 1918——1919

[p. 109] 

[p. 109]

VAGONES DE TERCERA

 Refrain

 HARD ON YOUR RUMP BUMP BUMP HARD ON YOUR RUMP BUMP BUMP

I

 O the savage munching of the long dark train crunching up the miles crunching up the long slopes and the hills that crouch and sprawl through the night like animals asleep, gulping the winking towns and the shadow-brimmed valleys where lone trees twist their thorny arms.

 The smoke flares red and yellow; the smoke curls like a long dragon's tongue over the broken 

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