Ladies, 1918-1928

When I left that old French sunlight,
bored in the buried color of the people
who sang for a man who had his own mystery,
alive, destructive, disguised—
I mean, drunken with his Muse, their angel,
shedding its grace on half-marble columns—
lukewarm blood and searches for God,
and we may have to wait for the delicate body

at dawn: impossible soft voice,
the arrival of five senses
trembling, perfected, inadequate, authentic,
with wings where, naturally, they made terrible saints
and, of our own sharp kissing, strange at the dawn
of garden processions and all the world,
in trying to love, was imprisoned by the dance
and the bullfight. The body, begging for a drive

home, makes us forget the great highways
where, motionless, she painted wind and saliva.