A Pushcart at the Curb
dome flat deep purple cuts the sky.

Schoolboys are romping in the square in and out among the silver tree-trunks out of the smoked rose shadows through the timid yellow lamplight ... Socks slip down fingermarks smudge white collars; they run and tussle in the shadows kicking the gravel with muddied boots with cheeks flushed hotter than the sky eyes brighter than the street-lamps with fingers tingling and breath fast:       banqueters early drunken on the fierce cold wine of the dead year.

 Paseo de la Castellana

IX

Green against the livid sky in their square dun-colored towers hang the bronze bells of Castile. In their unshakeable square towers jutting from the slopes of hills clang the bells of all the churches the dustbrown churches of Castile.

How they swing the green bronze bells athwart olive twilights of Castile till their fierce insistant clangour rings down the long plowed slopes breaks against the leaden hills whines among the trembling poplars beside sibilant swift green rivers.

O you strong bells of Castile that commanding clang your creed over treeless fields and villages that huddle in arroyos, gleaming orange with lights in the greenish dusk; can it be bells of Castile, can it be that you remember?

 Groans there in your bronze green curves in your imperious evocation stench of burnings, rattling screams quenched among the crackling flames? The crowd, the pile of faggots in the square, the yellow robes.... Is it that bells of Castile that you remember?

 Toledo——Madrid

X

The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez. The speeding dark-green water mirrors the old red walls and the balustrades and close-barred windows of the palace; and on the other bank three stooping washerwomen whose bright red shawls and piles of linen gleam in the green, the swirling green where shimmer the walls of Aranjuez.

There's smoke in the gardens of Aranjuez smoke of the burning of the years' dead leaves; the damp paths rustle underfoot thick with the crisp broad leaves of the planes.


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