POETRY
Was embalmed, was washed in gold,
Laid in a tomb in the black rocks,
Where the agave grew, on a clear day,
With her cricket-cages
And the jaded sunlight of Kings.
The ass-driver
is
gone, the King
is
come!
Let them paint the bed-chamber bright
And the male flower on the forehead of Queens ...
I have dreamed thic;, said the oriole,
Infant qulens a hundredfold.
Weep, ass-driver, sing, oriole,
Girls sealed in jars
Like cicadas in honey,
The flutes stopped in the kitchens
And the expounding of doctrine in the halls.
*
*
*
Had only a dream and a young goat,
-Girl and kid of one milk-
Had love only of an Old Woman.
. Her drawers of gold went to the clergy,
To the Old Woman her white shirts.
Very old woman on a balcony,
In her rattan rocking-chair,
And who will die on a fine clear day
In the district of green clay ...
Sing, oh Kings, the sons to be born!
In the rooms white as semolina
The Scribe tidies
his
earthen loaves.
Order resumes in the great Books.
For the oriole and the kid
Inquire of the Chief Cook.
445
ST.-
J.
PERSE
(Translated by Eleanor Clark)
