Chapter III

Three little harlots
with artificial roses in their hair
each at a window of a third-class coach
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

Too much powder and too much paint
shining black hair.
One sings to the clatter of wheels
a swaying unending song
that trails across the crimson slopes
and the blue ranks of olives
and the green ranks of vines.
Three little harlots
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

The plowman drops the traces
on the shambling oxen's backs
turns his head and stares
wistfully after the train.

The mule-boy stops his mules
shows his white teeth and shouts
a word, then urges dejectedly
the mules to the road again.

The stout farmer on his horse
straightens his broad felt hat,
makes the horse leap, and waves
grandiosely after the train.

Is it that the queen Astarte
strides across the fallow lands
to fertilize the swelling grapes
amid shrieking of her corybants?

Too much powder and too much paint
shining black hair.
Three little harlots
on the train from Zafra to the fair.

_Sevilla--Merida_

IV

My desires have gone a-hunting,
circle through the fields and sniff along the hedges,
hounds that have lost the scent.

Outside, behind the white swirling patterns of coalsmoke,
hunched fruit-trees slide by
slowly pirouetting,
and poplars and aspens on tiptoe
peer over each other's shoulders
at the long black rattling train;
colts sniff and fling their heels in air
across the dusty meadows,
and the sun now and then
looks with vague interest through the clouds
at the blonde harvest mottled with poppies,
and the Joseph's cloak of fields, neatly sewn together with hedges,
that hides the grisly skeleton
of the elemental earth.

My mad desires
circle through the fields and sniff along the hedges,
hounds that have lost the scent.

_Misto_