10 Best Famous Snails Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Snails poems. This is a select list of the best famous Snails poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Snails poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of snails poems.

• All Famous Snails Poems

 When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age, 
The journalist with his marketable woes 
Fills up once more the inevitable page 
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose; 

Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop 
With horror at the house not made with hands 
And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup 
Another pure theosophist demands 

Rebirth in other, less industrial stars 
Where huge towns thrust up in synthetic stone 
And films and sleek miraculous motor cars 
And celluloid and rubber are unknown; 

When from his vegetable Sunday School 
Emerges with the neatly maudlin phrase 
Still one more Nature poet, to rant or drool 
About the "Standardization of the Race"; 

I see, stooping among her orchard trees, 
The old, sound Earth, gathering her windfalls in, 
Broad in the hams and stiffening at the knees, 
Pause and I see her grave malicious grin. 

For there is no manufacturer competes 
With her in the mass production of shapes and things. 
Over and over she gathers and repeats 
The cast of a face, a million butterfly wings. 

She does not tire of the pattern of a rose. 
Her oldest tricks still catch us with surprise. 
She cannot recall how long ago she chose 
The streamlined hulls of fish, the snail's long eyes, 

Love, which still pours into its ancient mould 
The lashing seed that grows to a man again, 
From whom by the same processes unfold 
Unending generations of living men. 

She has standardized his ultimate needs and pains. 
Lost tribes in a lost language mutter in 
His dreams: his science is tethered to their brains, 
His guilt merely repeats Original Sin. 

And beauty standing motionless before 
Her mirror sees behind her, mile on mile, 
A long queue in an unknown corridor, 
Anonymous faces plastered with her smile.

 I

He wakes in darkness. All around
are sounds of stones shifting, locks
unlocking. As if some one had lifted
away a great weight, light
falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
gone. He has known a long suffering
of himself, himself sharpen by the pain
of his wound of separation he now
no longer minds, for the pain is only himself
now, grown small, become a little growing
longing joy. Something teaches him
to rise, to stand and move out through
the opening the light has made.
He stands on the green hilltop amid
the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all
opened doors. Half blind with light, he
traces with a forefinger the moss-grown
furrows of his name, hearing among the others
one woman's cry. She is crying and laughing,
her voice a stream of silver he seems to see:
"Oh William, honey, is it you? Oh!"

II
Surely it will be for this: the redbud
pink, the wild plum white, yellow
trout lilies in the morning light,
the trees, the pastures turning green.
On the river, quiet at daybreak,
the reflections of the trees, as in
another world, lie across
from shore to shore. Yes, here
is where they will come, the dead,
when they rise from the grave.

III
White
dogwood flowers
afloat
in leafing woods
untrouble
my mind.

IV
Ask the world to reveal its quietude—
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellows, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

V
A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares
Inhabit it, and daily evidence
Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,
Of freedom slack and dull among the free,
Of faith subsumed in idiot luxury,
And beauty beggared in the marketplace
And clear-eyed wisdom bleary with dispraise.

VI
Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

VII
The wind of the fall is here.
It is everywhere. It moves
every leaf of every 
tree. It is the only motion
of the river. Green leaves
grow weary of their color.
Now evening too is in the air.
The bright hawks of the day
subside. The owls waken.
Small creatures die because
larger creatures are hungry.
How superior to this
human confusion of greed
and creed, blood and fire.

VIII
The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cezanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he's alive
forever, this instant, and may be.

 we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing --
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss -- worse than ****;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
fagged interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
humping it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and sucked a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd kill you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn't want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads -- all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay --
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don't want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go -- walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.

What are little boys made of, made of?
What are little boys made of?
"Snaps and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails;
And that's what little boys are made of."

What are little girls made of, made of?
What are little girls made of?
"Sugar and spice, and all that's nice;
And that's what little girls are made of."

 It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe;
In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern
She reared, and rounded her ears in turn.
Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer;
And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose,
For their day-dream slowlier came to a close,
Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by,
The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound,
The hounds swept after with never a sound,
But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild,
And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds
For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds:
"I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife
and the child."

So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand;
But he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," --
Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn,
Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand."

Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of his breath with the height
of the hill,
Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does
Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose
His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak
for his will.

So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn.
But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below
Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go
All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern,

And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone,
As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see.
"Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?"
Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown.

"Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild,
"And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed;
I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast."
Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!"
Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all:
"Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall,
And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!"

So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled.
"Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be,
If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me,
I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!"

Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill
Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame;
And that place of the lashing full quiet became;
And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still.

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he.
"There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath.
Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death,
He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea.

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space,
Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen,
And that place of the lashing is live with men,
And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race.

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold.
They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea,
And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! --
Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold

Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep,
And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain.
But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain;
Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep.

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still.
And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees,
Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please
For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will.

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song,
Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all,
Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall,
And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!"

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red,
Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be!
Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!"
But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead?

Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- "Husband,
the lashing will heal;
But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave?
Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave?
Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly
to kneel

With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth.
Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag;
"Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag;
Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child
in his mirth.

And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song.
When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height,
And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight
Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong.

And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer --
And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace,
Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face --
In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air,

And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea,
Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean,
Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain,
Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots
of a tree --

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped
in the brine,
And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew,
And the mother stared white on the waste of blue,
And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine.

 'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
'What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
'Nothing at all of any things like that.'
'What were they, then?'
 'All sorts of ***** things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes,
All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour,
Though all came moving slowly out together.'
'Describe just one of them.'
 'I am unable.'
'What were their colours?'
 'Mostly nameless colours,
Colours you'd like to see; but one was puce
Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish.
Some had no colour.'
 'Tell me, had they legs?'
'Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.'
'But did these things come out in any order?'
What o'clock was it? What was the day of the week?
Who else was present? How was the weather?'
'I was coming to that. It was half-past three
On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining.
The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu
On thrity-seven shimmering instruments
Collecting for Caernarvon's (Fever) Hospital Fund.
The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth,
Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth,
Were all assembled. Criccieth's mayor addressed them
First in good Welsh and then in fluent English,
Twisting his fingers in his chain of office,
Welcoming the things. They came out on the sand,
Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward
Silently at a snail's pace. But at last
The most odd, indescribable thing of all
Which hardly one man there could see for wonder
Did something recognizably a something.'
'Well, what?'
 'It made a noise.'
 'A frightening noise?'
'No, no.'
 'A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?'
'No, but a very loud, respectable noise ---
Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning
In Chapel, close before the second psalm.'
'What did the mayor do?'
 'I was coming to that.'

 EVERYTHING is jazz:
snails, jails, rails, tails, males, females,
snow-white cotton bales.

Knee-bone, thigh, hip-bone.
Jazz slips you percussion bone
classified "unknown."

Slick lizard rhythms,
cigar-smoke tunes, straight-gin sky
laced with double moons.

Second-chance rhythms,
don't-give-up riffs: jazz gets HIGH
off can'ts, buts, and ifs.

 I don't know what it is,
 but I distrust myself
 when I start to like a girl
 a lot.

 It makes me nervous.
 I don't say the right things
 or perhaps I start
 to examine,
 evaluate,
 compute
 what I am saying.

 If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
 and she says, "I don't know,"
 I start thinking : Does she really like me? 

 In other words
 I get a little creepy. 

 A friend of mine once said,
 "It's twenty times better to be friends
 with someone
 than it is to be in love with them." 

 I think he's right and besides,
 it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
 and keeping snails happy.
 That's all taken care of.

 BUT 

 if a girl likes me a lot
 and starts getting real nervous
 and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
 and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
 and she says things like,
 "Do you think it's going to rain?"
 and I say, "It beats me,"
 and she says, "Oh,"
 and looks a little sad
 at the clear blue California sky,
 I think : Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
 instead of me.

 (PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers, or the weeds,
Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn
Had net-worked with brown
The white skin of each grape on the bunches,
Marked like a quail's crown,
Those creatures you make such account of,
Whose heads,—specked with white
Over brown like a great spider's back,
As I told you last night,— 
Your mother bites off for her supper;
Red-ripe as could be.
Pomegranates were chapping and splitting
In halves on the tree:
And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone,
Or in the thick dust
On the path, or straight out of the rock side,
Wherever could thrust
Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower
Its yellow face up,
For the prize were great butterflies fighting,
Some five for one cup.
So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning,
What change was in store,
By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets
Which woke me before
I could open my shutter, made fast
With a bough and a stone,
And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs,
Sole lattice that's known!
Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles,
While, busy beneath,
Your priest and his brother tugged at them,
The rain in their teeth:
And out upon all the flat house-roofs
Where split figs lay drying,
The girls took the frails under cover:
Nor use seemed in trying
To get out the boats and go fishing,
For, under the cliff,
Fierce the black water frothed o'er the blind-rock
No seeing our skiff
Arrive about noon from Amalfi,
—Our fisher arrive,
And pitch down his basket before us,
All trembling alive
With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,
—You touch the strange lumps,
And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
Of horns and of humps.
Which only the fisher looks grave at,
While round him like imps
Cling screaming the children as naked
And brown as his shrimps;
Himself too as bare to the middle— 
—You see round his neck
The string and its brass coin suspended,
That saves him from wreck.
But today not a boat reached Salerno,
So back to a man
Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards
Grape-harvest began:
In the vat, half-way up in our house-side,
Like blood the juice spins,
While your brother all bare-legged is dancing
Till breathless he grins
Dead-beaten, in effort on effort
To keep the grapes under,
Since still when he seems all but master,
In pours the fresh plunder
From girls who keep coming and going
With basket on shoulder,
And eyes shut against the rain's driving,
Your girls that are older,— 
For under the hedges of aloe,
And where, on its bed
Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple
Lies pulpy and red,
All the young ones are kneeling and filling
Their laps with the snails
Tempted out by this first rainy weather,— 
Your best of regales,
As tonight will be proved to my sorrow,
When, supping in state,
We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen,
Three over one plate)
With lasagne so tempting to swallow
In slippery ropes,
And gourds fried in great purple slices,
That colour of popes.
Meantime, see the grape-bunch they've brought you,— 
The rain-water slips
O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe
Which the wasp to your lips
Still follows with fretful persistence— 
Nay, taste, while awake,
This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball,
That peels, flake by flake,
Like an onion's, each smoother and whiter;
Next, sip this weak wine
From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper,
A leaf of the vine,— 
And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh
That leaves through its juice
The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth
...Scirocco is loose!
Hark! the quick, whistling pelt of the olives
Which, thick in one's track,
Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them,
Though not yet half black!
How the old twisted olive trunks shudder!
The medlars let fall
Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees
Snap off, figs and all,— 
For here comes the whole of the tempest
No refuge, but creep
Back again to my side and my shoulder,
And listen or sleep.

O how will your country show next week
When all the vine-boughs
Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture
The mules and the cows?
Last eve, I rode over the mountains;
Your brother, my guide,
Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles
That offered, each side,
Their fruit-balls, black, glossy and luscious,— 
Or strip from the sorbs
A treasure, so rosy and wondrous,
Of hairy gold orbs!
But my mule picked his sure, sober path out,
Just stopping to neigh
When he recognized down in the valley
His mates on their way
With the faggots, and barrels of water;
And soon we emerged
From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow
And still as we urged
Our way, the woods wondered, and left us,
As up still we trudged
Though the wild path grew wilder each instant,
And place was e'en grudged
'Mid the rock-chasms, and piles of loose stones
(Like the loose broken teeth
Of some monster, which climbed there to die
From the ocean beneath)
Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-weed
That clung to the path,
And dark rosemary, ever a-dying,
That, 'spite the wind's wrath,
So loves the salt rock's face to seaward,— 
And lentisks as staunch
To the stone where they root and bear berries,— 
And... what shows a branch
Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets
Of pale seagreen leaves— 
Over all trod my mule with the caution
Of gleaners o'er sheaves,
Still, foot after foot like a lady— 
So, round after round,
He climbed to the top of Calvano,
And God's own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains,
And under, the sea,
And within me, my heart to bear witness
What was and shall be!
Oh Heaven, and the terrible crystal!
No rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived
In the blue solitudes!
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement!
Still moving with you— 
For, ever some new head and breast of them
Thrusts into view
To observe the intruder—you see it
If quickly you turn
And, before they escape you, surprise them— 
They grudge you should learn
How the soft plains they look on, lean over,
And love (they pretend)
-Cower beneath them; the flat sea-pine crouches
The wild fruit-trees bend,
E'en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut— 
All is silent and grave— 
'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty— 
How fair, but a slave!
So, I turned to the sea,—and there slumbered
As greenly as ever
Those isles of the siren, your Galli;
No ages can sever
The Three, nor enable their sister
To join them,—half-way
On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses— 
No farther today;
Though the small one, just launched in the wave,
Watches breast-high and steady
From under the rock, her bold sister
Swum half-way already.
Fortu, shall we sail there together
And see from the sides
Quite new rocks show their faces—new haunts
Where the siren abides?
Shall we sail round and round them, close over
The rocks, though unseen,
That ruffle the grey glassy water
To glorious green?
Then scramble from splinter to splinter,
Reach land and explore,
On the largest, the strange square black turret
With never a door,
Just a loop to admit the quick lizards;
Then, stand there and hear
The birds' quiet singing, that tells us
What life is, so clear!
The secret they sang to Ulysses,
When, ages ago,
He heard and he knew this life's secret,
I hear and I know!

Ah, see! The sun breaks o'er Calvano— 
He strikes the great gloom
And flutters it o'er the mount's summit
In airy gold fume!
All is over! Look out, see the gipsy,
Our tinker and smith,
Has arrived, set up bellows and forge,
And down-squatted forthwith
To his hammering, under the wall there;
One eye keeps aloof
The urchins that itch to be putting
His jews'-harps to proof,
While the other, through locks of curled wire,
Is watching how sleek
Shines the hog, come to share in the windfalls
—An abbot's own cheek!
All is over! Wake up and come out now,
And down let us go,
And see the fine things got in order
At Church for the show
Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening;
Tomorrow's the Feast
Of the Rosary's Virgin, by no means
Of Virgins the least— 
As you'll hear in the off-hand discourse
Which (all nature, no art)
The Dominican brother, these three weeks,
Was getting by heart.
Not a post nor a pillar but's dizened
With red and blue papers;
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
A-blaze with long tapers;
But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
Rigged glorious to hold
All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers
And trumpeters bold,
Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,
Who, when the priest's hoarse,
Will strike us up something that's brisk
For the feast's second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Be carried in pomp
Through the plain, while in gallant procession
The priests mean to stomp.
And all round the glad church lie old bottles
With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
Religiously popped.
And at night from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
And more poppers bang!
At all events, come—to the garden,
As far as the wall,
See me tap with a hoe on the plaster
Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

..."Such trifles"—you say?
Fortu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely today
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Is righteous and wise
—If 'tis proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!

 1. Cogida and death 

At five in the afternoon. 
It was exactly five in the afternoon. 
A boy brought the white sheet 
at five in the afternoon. 
A frail of lime ready prepared 
at five in the afternoon. 
The rest was death, and death alone. 

The wind carried away the cottonwool 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel 
at five in the afternoon. 
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle 
at five in the afternoon. 
And a thigh with a desolated horn 
at five in the afternoon. 
The bass-string struck up 
at five in the afternoon. 
Arsenic bells and smoke 
at five in the afternoon. 
Groups of silence in the corners 
at five in the afternoon. 
And the bull alone with a high heart! 
At five in the afternoon. 
When the sweat of snow was coming 
at five in the afternoon, 
when the bull ring was covered with iodine 
at five in the afternoon. 
Death laid eggs in the wound 
at five in the afternoon. 
At five in the afternoon. 
At five o'clock in the afternoon. 

A coffin on wheels is his bed 
at five in the afternoon. 
Bones and flutes resound in his ears 
at five in the afternoon. 
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead 
at five in the afternoon. 
The room was iridiscent with agony 
at five in the afternoon. 
In the distance the gangrene now comes 
at five in the afternoon. 
Horn of the lily through green groins 
at five in the afternoon. 
The wounds were burning like suns 
at five in the afternoon. 
At five in the afternoon. 
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! 
It was five by all the clocks! 
It was five in the shade of the afternoon! 



2. The Spilled Blood 

I will not see it! 

Tell the moon to come, 
for I do not want to see the blood 
of Ignacio on the sand. 

I will not see it! 

The moon wide open. 
Horse of still clouds, 
and the grey bull ring of dreams 
with willows in the barreras. 

I will not see it! 

Let my memory kindle! 
Warm the jasmines 
of such minute whiteness! 

I will not see it! 

The cow of the ancient world 
passed har sad tongue 
over a snout of blood 
spilled on the sand, 
and the bulls of Guisando, 
partly death and partly stone, 
bellowed like two centuries 
sated with threading the earth. 
No. 
I will not see it! 

Ignacio goes up the tiers 
with all his death on his shoulders. 
He sought for the dawn 
but the dawn was no more. 
He seeks for his confident profile 
and the dream bewilders him 
He sought for his beautiful body 
and encountered his opened blood 
Do not ask me to see it! 
I do not want to hear it spurt 
each time with less strength: 
that spurt that illuminates 
the tiers of seats, and spills 
over the cordury and the leather 
of a thirsty multiude. 
Who shouts that I should come near! 
Do not ask me to see it! 

His eyes did not close 
when he saw the horns near, 
but the terrible mothers 
lifted their heads. 
And across the ranches, 
an air of secret voices rose, 
shouting to celestial bulls, 
herdsmen of pale mist. 
There was no prince in Sevilla 
who could compare to him, 
nor sword like his sword 
nor heart so true. 
Like a river of lions 
was his marvellous strength, 
and like a marble toroso 
his firm drawn moderation. 
The air of Andalusian Rome 
gilded his head 
where his smile was a spikenard 
of wit and intelligence. 
What a great torero in the ring! 
What a good peasant in the sierra! 
How gentle with the sheaves! 
How hard with the spurs! 
How tender with the dew! 
How dazzling the fiesta! 
How tremendous with the final 
banderillas of darkness! 

But now he sleeps without end. 
Now the moss and the grass 
open with sure fingers 
the flower of his skull. 
And now his blood comes out singing; 
singing along marshes and meadows, 
sliden on frozen horns, 
faltering soulles in the mist 
stoumbling over a thousand hoofs 
like a long, dark, sad tongue, 
to form a pool of agony 
close to the starry Guadalquivir. 
Oh, white wall of Spain! 
Oh, black bull of sorrow! 
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio! 
Oh, nightingale of his veins! 
No. 
I will not see it! 
No chalice can contain it, 
no swallows can drink it, 
no frost of light can cool it, 
nor song nor deluge og white lilies, 
no glass can cover mit with silver. 
No. 
I will not see it! 



3. The Laid Out Body 

Stone is a forehead where dreames grieve 
without curving waters and frozen cypresses. 
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time 
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets. 

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves 
raising their tender riddle arms, 
to avoid being caught by lying stone 
which loosens their limbs without soaking their blood. 

For stone gathers seed and clouds, 
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra: 
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire, 
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls. 

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone. 
All is finished. What is happening! Contemplate his face: 
death has covered him with pale sulphur 
and has place on him the head of dark minotaur. 

All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth. 
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest, 
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow, 
warms itself on the peak of the herd. 

What is they saying? A stenching silence settles down. 
We are here with a body laid out which fades away, 
with a pure shape which had nightingales 
and we see it being filled with depthless holes. 

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true! 
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner, 
nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent. 
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes 
to see his body without a chance of rest. 

Here I want to see those men of hard voice. 
Those that break horses and dominate rivers; 
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing 
with a mouth full of sun and flint. 

Here I want to see them. Before the stone. 
Before this body with broken reins. 
I want to know from them the way out 
for this captain stripped down by death. 

I want them to show me a lament like a river 
wich will have sweet mists and deep shores, 
to take the body of Ignacio where it looses itself 
without hearing the double planting of the bulls. 

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon 
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull, 
loses itself in the night without song of fishes 
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke. 

I don't want to cover his face with handkerchiefs 
that he may get used to the death he carries. 
Go, Ignacio, feel not the hot bellowing 
Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies! 



4. Absent Soul 

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree, 
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house. 
The child and the afternoon do not know you 
because you have dead forever. 

The shoulder of the stone does not know you 
nor the black silk, where you are shuttered. 
Your silent memory does not know you 
because you have died forever 

The autumn will come with small white snails, 
misty grapes and clustered hills, 
but no one will look into your eyes 
because you have died forever. 

Because you have died for ever, 
like all the dead of the earth, 
like all the dead who are forgotten 
in a heap of lifeless dogs. 

Nobady knows you. No. But I sing of you. 
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace. 
Of the signal maturity of your understanding. 
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth. 
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety. 

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born 
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure. 
I sing of his elegance with words that groan, 
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.