grinding iron and pale caged lives made blind by the dust of toil to coin the very sun to gold.

 Plaza de Cibeles

VII

Footsteps and the leisurely patter of rain.

 Beside the lamppost in the alley stands a girl in a long sleek shawl that moulds vaguely to the curves of breast and arms. Her eyes are in shadow.

A smell of frying fish; footsteps of people going to dinner clatter eagerly through the lane. A boy with a trough of meat on his shoulder turns by the lamppost, his steps drag. The green light slants in the black of his eyes. Her eyes are in shadow.

Footsteps of people going to dinner clatter eagerly; the rain falls with infinite nonchalance ... a man turns with a twirl of moustaches and the green light slants on his glasses on the round buttons of his coat. Her eyes are in shadow.

A woman with an umbrella       keeps her eyes straight ahead and lifts her dress to avoid the mud on the pavingstones.

An old man stares without fear into the eyes of the girl through the stripes of the rain. His steps beat faster and he sniffs hard suddenly the smell of dinner and frying fish. Was it a flame of old days expanding in his cold blood, or a shiver of rigid graves, chill clay choking congealing?

Beside the lamppost in the alley stands a girl in a long sleek shawl that moulds vaguely to the curves of breast and arms.

 Calle del Gato

VIII

A brown net of branches quivers above silver trunks of planes. Here and there a late leaf flutters its faint death-rattle in the wind. Beyond, the sky burns fervid rose like red wine held against the sun.

 Schoolboys are playing in the square dodging among the silver tree-trunks collars gleam and white knees as they romp shrilly.

 Lamps bloom out one by one like jessamine, yellow and small. At the far end a church's 

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