women hurrying to work an old hag who has a mole on her chin that is tufted with long white hairs sells incense-sticks, and the trail of their strangeness lingers in the many-scented streets among the smells of markets and peaches and the must of old books from the quays and the warmth of early-roasting coffee.

 The old hag's incense has smothered the timid scent of wild strawberries and triumphantly mingled with the strong reek from the river of green slime along stonework of docks and the pitch-caulked decks of barges, barges casually come from far towns towards far towns unhurryingly bound.

O douce Sainte Geneviève ramène moi a ta ville, Paris.

XI A L'OMBRE DES JEUNES FILLES EN FLEURS

And now when I think of you I see you on your piano-stool finger the ineffectual bright keys and even in the pinkish parlor glow your eyes sea-grey are very wide as if they carried the reflection of mocking black pinebranches and unclimbed red-purple mountains mist-tattered under a violet-gleaming evening.

 But chirruping of marriageable girls voices of eager, wise virgins, no lamp unlit every wick well trimmed, fill the pinkish parlor chairs, bobbing hats and shrill tinkling teacups in circle after circle about you so that I can no longer see your eyes.

Shall I tear down the pinkish curtains smash the imitation ivory keyboard that you may pluck with bare fingers on the strings?

 I sit cramped in my chair. Futility tumbles everlastingly like great flabby snowflakes about me.

 Were they in your eyes, or mine       the tattered mists about the mountains and the pitiless grey sea?

 1919

[p. 163] 

[p. 163]

ON FOREIGN TRAVEL

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