CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

230 DRAMATIC ROMANCES AND LYRICS
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 to-night 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 thro' its juice
The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth
. . . Scirocco is loose I
Hark I the quick, whistling pelt of the olives
'Which, thick in one's track,
Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them,
Tho' not yet half black I
How the old twisted olive trunks shudder I
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 I
No refuge, but creep
©Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia