lands.

 The train with teeth flashing gnaws through the piecrust of hills and plains greedy of horizons.

 Alcazar de San Juan

II TO R. H.

 I invite all the gods to dine on the hard benches of my third class coach that joggles over brown uplands dragged at the end of a rattling train.

 I invite all the gods to dine, great gods and small gods, gods of air and earth and sea, and of the grey land where among ghostly rubbish heaps and cast-out things linger the strengthless dead.

 I invite all the gods to dine, Jehovah and Crepitus and Sebek, the slimy crocodile ... But no; wait ... I revoke the invitation.

 For I have seen you, crowding gods, hungry gods. You have a drab official look. You have your pockets full of bills, claims for indemnity, for incense unsniffed since men first jumped up in their sleep and drove you out of doors.

Let me instead, O djinn that sows the stars and tunes the strings of the violin, have fifty lyric poets, not pale parson folk, occasional sonneteers, but sturdy fellows who ride dolphins, who need no wine to make them drunk, who do not fear to meet red death at the meanads' hands or to have their heads at last float vine-crowned on the Thracian sea.

Anacreon, a partridge-wing? A sip of wine, Simonides? Algy has gobbled all the pastry and left none for the Elizabethans who come arm in arm, singing bawdy songs, smelling of sack, from the Mermaid. Ronsard, will you eat nothing, only sniff roses? Those Anthologists have husky appetites! There's nothing left but a green banana unless that galleon comes from Venily with Hillyer breakfasts wrapped in sonnet-paper.

 But they've all brought gods with them! Avaunt! Take them away, O djinn that paints the clouds and brings in the night in the rumble and clatter of the train cadences out of the past ... Did you not see how each saved a bit out of the banquet to take home and burn in quiet to his god?

 Prev. P 26/51 next