of tambourines and staccato cackle of castanets they are welcoming the new year, and I look in the eyes of the woman;       (are they your wide eyes O Eros?)       who sits with wine-dabbled lips and stained tinsel dress torn open by the brown hands of strong young lovers;       (were they your brown hands O Eros?).

—Your flesh is hot to my cold hands hot to thaw the ice of an old curse now that with pomp of plumes and strings of ceremonial cabs they are burying despair.

She laughs and points with a skinny forefinger at the flabby yellow breasts that hang over the tarnished tinsel of her dress, and shows me her brown wolf's teeth; and the blood in my temples goes suddenly cold with bitterness and I know it was not despair that they buried.

New Year's Day——Casa de Bottin

VII

 The leaves are full grown now and the lindens are in flower. Horseshoes leave their mark on the sun-softened asphalt. Men unloading vegetable carts along the steaming market curb bare broad chests pink from sweating; their wet shirts open to the last button cling to their ribs and shoulders.

 The leaves are full grown now and the lindens are in flower.

 At night along the riverside glinting watery lights sway upon the lapping waves like many-colored candles that flicker in the wind.

 The warm wind smells of pitch from the moored barges smells of the broad leaves of the trees wilted from the day's long heat; smells of gas from the last taxicab.

 Sounds of the riverwater rustling       circumspectly past the piers of bridges that span the glitter with dark of men and women's voices many voices mouth to mouth smoothness of flesh touching flesh, a harsh short sigh blurred into a kiss.

 The leaves are full grown now and the lindens are in flower.

Quai Malaquais

VIII

 In me somewhere is a grey room my fathers worked through many lives to build; through the barred distorting windowpanes I see the new moon in the sky.

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