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ROCKIN' LAS AMERICAS
Illuminations: Cultural Formation of the Americas
John Beverley and Sara Castro-Klaren, Editors
Rockin' Las Americas
The Clobal Politics of Rock in Latinlo America

EDITED BY DEBORAH PACINI HERNANDEZ,

HECTOR FERNANDEZ L'HOESTE, AND ERIC ZOLOV

University of Pittsburgh Press

Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa" 15260
Copyright © 2004, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
1098765432 I

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rockin' las Americas: the global politics of rock in Latin/o America I
edited by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Hector Fernandez L'Hoeste, and
Eric Zolov.
p. cm. - (Illuminations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8229-4226-7 (cloth: alk. paper) - ISBN 0-8229-5841-4 (pbk. :
alk. paper)
1. Rock music-Political aspects-Latin America. 2. Rock music-
Social aspects-Latin America I. Pacini Hernandez, Deborah.
II. Fernandez L'Hoeste, Hector D., 1962- III. Zolov, Eric. IV.
Illuminations (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
ML3917.L27R632004 2003027604
To rockeros and rockeras everywhere, who over the years have
defied the idea that rock is a crime.

Para todos los rockeros y rockeras, quienes, a traves de los alios,

han desafiado la nodon de que el rock sea un crimen.

Para todos os roqueiros e roqueiras em todo mundo, que, atraves

dos anos, tern desafiado a ideia de que 0 rock seja urn crime.
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Mapping Rock Music Cultures across the Americas

Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Hector Fernandez L'Hoeste, and Eric Zolov

La Onda Chicana: Mexico's Forgotten Rock Counterculture 22

Eric Zolov

Between Rock and a Hard Place:

Negotiating Rock in Revolutionary Cuba, 1960-1980 43
Deborah Pacini Hernandez and Reebee Garofalo

Black Pau: Uncovering the History of Brazilian Soul 68

Bryan McCann

Boricua Rock: Puerto Rican by Necessity! 91

Jorge Arevalo Mateus

The Politics and Anti-Politics of Uruguayan Rock 115

Abril Trigo

"A contra corriente": A History of Women Rockers in Mexico 142

Julia Palacios and Tere Estrada

"Soy punkera, lY que?": Sexuality, Translocality, and Punk in Los Angeles

and Beyond 160
Michelle Habell-Pallan

On How Bloque de Busqueda Lost Part of Its Name: The Predicament of

Colombian Rock in the U.S. Market 179
Hector D. Fernandez L'Hoeste

Let Me Sing My BRock: Learning to Listen to Brazilian Rock 200

Martha Tupinamba de Ulh6a

Guatemala's Alux Nahual:

A Non-"Latin American" Latin American Rock Group? 220
Paulo Alvarado

VII
My Generation: Rock and la Banda's Forced Survival Opposite
the Mexican State 241
Hector Castillo Berthier

Neoliberalism and Rock in the Popular Sectors of

Contemporary Argentina 261
Pablo Seman, Pablo Vila, and Cecilia Benedetti

A Detour to the Past: Memory and Mourning in Chilean

Post-Authoritarian Rock 290
Walescka Pi no-Ojeda

The Nortec Edge:

Border Traditions and "Electronica" in Tijuana 312
Susana Asensio

Esperando La Ultima Ola I Waiting for the Last Wave:

Manu Chao and the Music of Globalization 332
Josh Kun

Afterword: A Changeable Template of Rock in Las Americas 347

George Yudice

Appendix: Rock in Latin America, 1940-2000 357

Notes 363
Selected Bibliography 395
Contributors 405
Index 409

VIII
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, we wish to express our profound gratitude to the

Rockefeller Foundation for providing the funds, setting, and logistics that per-
mitted us to realize the Rockin' Las Americas authors' seminar that immeasur-
ably improved this book. On behalf of all participants at the Bellagio meeting,
our sincere thanks to Susan Garfield, Director of the New York Office of the
Bellagio Conference Center, and to Gianna Celli, Director of the Center in
Bellagio, Italy, for all their help in making sure that the seminar ran smoothly.
The staff at the Bellagio Conference Center did everything possible to maxi-
mize our efforts during the two weeks of our meeting, and did so in an ex-
traordinarily hospitable and welcoming atmosphere. This book would not
have been the same without the Bellagio conference.
We also want to acknowledge a number of people who contributed to this
project by commenting on prospectuses, proposals, and/or various sections of
the manuscript. These include Emmy Breton, John Coatsworth, Christopher
Dunn, Juan Flores, Reebee Garofalo, Bryan McCann, Lauri McKain-Fernandez,
Charles Perrone, George Yudice, and anonymous reviewers for the University
of Pittsburgh Press. Other assistance came from Lori Oxford and Daniel
Richardson, who worked on the translations from Spanish and Portuguese,
and David Rains, who helped in the final assembly of the manuscript.
Special thanks go to the editorial staff at University of Pittsburgh Press, and
especially to our editor Nathan MacBrien and series editor John Beverley for
their unwavering enthusiasm for this project. The immense challenge of
copyediting fell to Ruth Steinberg, who worked diligently from her post in
Guanajuato, Mexico, to provide consistency and flow to the final manuscript.
Finally, we want to express our gratitude to our home institutions for sup-
porting us during the various stages of the project: Georgia State University's
College of Arts and Sciences, its Center for Latin American and Latino Studies,
and the Georgia State University Foundation; the Provost's Office at Franklin
and Marshall College; and the Dean's Office of Tufts University.

IX
ROCKIN' LAS AMERICAS
 ATLANTIC
OCEAN

PACIFIC
OCEA N

o 800km

o SOOmi
Mapping Rock Music Cultures across
the Americas
DEBORAH PACINI HERNANDEZ, HECTOR FERNANDEZ L'HOESTE,
AND ERIC ZOLOV

"Rock is not a crime." This graffiti on a wall in Puerto Rico only makes
sense when one understands that, for decades, Latin American rock fans and
performers have been subject to a systematic pattern of harassment and
abuses, under all forms of government-from Castro's Cuba to Pinochet's
Chile-and ranging from outright government repression, to intellectual
demonization and social ostracism. In Mexico, one of the first countries in
Latin America where rock 'n' roll took hold, the government closed down the
cafes cantantes (youth clubs) throughout the early 1960s, claiming that they fo-
mented "rebellion without a cause" and encouraged the "distortion of local
customs." I In mid -1960s Brazil, the avant-garde rock project called Tropicalia
had to defend itself both from nationalists on the right, who feared its poten-
tial for subversion, and from critics on the left, who loudly asserted that rock
was a deformation of traditional musical forms.2 When, in 1967, the young
Cuban guitarist Silvio Rodriguez (who would shortly become a principal figure
of the left-leaning Nueva Trova song movement) mentioned on government
television that the Beatles were an important influence on his work, he was
promptly fired. 3 During the "Dirty War" period in Argentina (1976-82), the
police routinely disrupted concerts and beat up rock followers for the sole of-
fense of gathering to listen to music considered threatening to the military re-
gime. Those in public office who supported local rock could also find them-
selves vulnerable to attack. In 1971 the mayor of Medellfn, Colombia, lost his

1
Z • PACINI HERNANDEZ, FERNANDEZ L'HOESTE, AND ZOLOV

post after having allowed a major rock festival to take place in the town of
Ancon, just outside of the city. Following a similar massive outdoor festival of
national rock bands in Mexico in 1971, commercial rock venues and large
concerts were effectively banned for more than a decade.
Rock in Latin America has by now been "decriminalized." Five decades af-
ter its initial arrival in Latin America, rock's long-contested status has finally
given way to social acceptance: it is now recognized as a legitimate form of
popular music and has been incorporated within nationalist cultural dis-
courses. Today, no nation-from revolutionary Cuba to indigenous Ecuador-
is exempt from the cultural impact of rock. And, as vigorous, nationally iden-
tified rock 'n' roll scenes have developed throughout the Americas, following
similar yet divergent trajectories, the region's cultural landscape has been
transformed in profound ways.
Nevertheless, in spite of a growing literature examining the impact and
spread of rock music cultures throughout Europe and the former Soviet
Union, little has been written on the history and contemporary presence of
rock in Latin America (or, for that matter, other developing nations).4 This la-
cuna has tended to reinforce assumptions that rock is somehow a distinctively
North American and European phenomenon, and moreover, that musicians
and fans need to be "developed," not only to appreciate rock's aesthetics, but
also to create original rock sounds. The essays here intend to challenge these
misconceptions and, at the same time, broaden the understanding of rock's
global impact by addressing fundamental questions regarding the spread of
rock and roll to Latin America: Why is it that rock became such a controversial
cultural force in Latin America? Given the highly contested nature of Latin
American nationalism, in what ways has rock served as a medium for express-
ing national identities? How has rock, a transnational musical practice origi-
nating in the United States and Great Britain, been resignified in Latin Ameri-
can contexts? How are questions of race, class, and gender that are specific to
Latin America inscribed in rock music and performance? How are the tensions
between desires for local belonging (to the nation, region, or neighborhood)
negotiated with desires for cosmopolitan belonging-especially given that "lo-
cal" often means dealing with the everyday politics of poverty and repression,
while "cosmopolitan" means engaging, in one form or another, with the influ-
ence of the United States or Western Europe? Ultimately, can there be a na-
tional rock in a transnational era, and if so, what exactly makes Latin American
rock truly Latin American?
These questions guided the intense collaboration that resulted in this book,
a collaboration among scholars and practicing rockeroslas (roqueroslas)5 from
diverse disciplines and from throughout the Americas (and Spain). With the
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Morning in the West:
A Book of Verse
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
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Title: Morning in the West: A Book of Verse

Author: Katherine Hale

Release date: September 8, 2020 [eBook #63153]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORNING IN THE

WEST: A BOOK OF VERSE ***
 MORNING IN THE WEST

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Grey Knitting
The White Comrade
The New Joan
Canadian Cities of Romance
Morning in the West
A BOOK OF VERSE

By
KATHERINE HALE
(Mrs. John Garvin)

THE RYERSON PRESS

TORONTO

Copyright, Canada, 1923, by

THE RYERSON PRESS

TO MY MOTHER

Katherine Hale Byard

who means song to me

CONTENTS
 I. Morning in the West

Cun-ne-wa-bum
Ballad of Jasper Road
Buffalo Meat
Return of the Trappers
An Old Lady
Spanish Pilots

II. Women

Enchantment
She Who Paddles
Down Near the Glen
The Bolshevik
Pavlowa Dancing
Calvé in Blue
Sign to Trespassers
Silver Slippers
A Fabulous Day
Christmas Eve
To Marjorie Pickthall
I Who Cut Patterns
Poetesses

III. Going North

Going North
Study in Shadows
Northern Graveyards
Stony Lake
Trade
Snake Island
Juniper Ring
White Slumber
Crimson Pool

IV. Miracles

Miracles
 MORNING IN THE WEST

CUN-NE-WA-BUM

Portrait in the Royal Ontario Museum

Cun-ne-wa-bum—"one who looks on stars"—

(Feel the singing wind from out the western hills)
"The tip-end of a swan's wing is her fan,
With a handle of porcupine quills."
Here is the artist's name, Paul Kane;
Painting in forty-seven, at Edmonton, I see.
That was when prairies were untamed,
And untamed this young Cree.

What an incantation in her name!

Magic as her dark face underneath the stars;
There is sword-like wind about it wrapped,
And echoes of old wars.

Cun-ne-wa-bum!
When turtle shells were rattling,
And the drums beat for the dance
In the great hall of the Factor's house till dawn,
You sat without the door,
Where the firelight on the floor
Caught the red of beads upon your moccasins.
At evening through the grassy plains the wind
Came shouting down the world to meet the dawn,
And with the wind the firelight rose and fell,
Answered with flame his shrill barbaric yell,
And died like whining fiddles at his feet.
And through it all the constant sound of drums—
Did your feet move to drums?

The men from near and far,

Crees and Sarcees,
And a Blackfoot brave or two,
Made rhythm of a dance that moves like rhyme
To the rush of wind, and rattles swung in time
To the constant, constant, constant beat of drums.

No Indian woman dances in the light;

Silent they sit together out of sight.
But to-night I think this artist from the East,
Who had come to paint the natives hereabout,
Found a splendid flare of crimson on the feast
And moved near the open door,
Where the firelight on the floor
Caught the red of beads upon your moccasins.

So it is, O Cun-ne-wa-bum,
Who were wont to look on stars,
That you sit for ever here,
Like a wild lost note from far,
From the days of ancient war
And of towered stockade and guns
In the Edmonton of seventy years ago.

In your buckskin and your beads

(Feel the sudden wind from out the western hills)
The tip-end of a swan's wing for your fan
With a handle of porcupine quills.
 BALLAD OF JASPER ROAD

I know a Blackfoot Chief

Whose name is Dark Plume Bill.
He lived beside the Jasper Road—
And lives there still.

He wears a queer checked coat

And a grey bowler hat,
But looks his ninety-seven years
For all of that.

His gaze is unconcerned

As he sits in the sun,
And counts the flashing motor-cars
That pass, one-by-one,

And trucks, like dreary monsters

Of a prehistoric day,
That are rushing down the road
In their crazy way.

"The first Red River cart,"

Said Dark Plume Bill to me,
"Came lurching up the prairie
Like a ship at sea."

(Oh, the long blue road,

And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)
"Then the carts came faster,
And at the time of snow
We camped outside the Palisade,
Seventy years ago.

"Arrows, guns—big Buffalo hunts,

Much long fight,
And fires to warm the tepees
For the feasts at night.

"But when they laid the steel

And the long trail awoke
My Indian tribe had scattered
Like the wigwam smoke."

His gaze was unconcerned,

Yet he scanned the way he knew,
As though from out its clamour
He had found a vanished clew.

And I thought it must be strange

To sit in the sun
And look upon an ancient road
That you had seen begun

Out of silence and mystery

And crafty, ambushed death,
Come alive with men, and monsters
Of such an alien breath.

(Oh, the long blue road

And the stealthy pad of feet
And the first patient ox-cart
With its sail-like sheet!)
 BUFFALO MEAT

A Daughter-in-law Writes

It takes a letter sixty days to go—

An Indian boy runs down the trail to-night.
What shall I write to you?
My mind is full of gossip of a town
That you have never dreamed of.
So—shall I tell you of our shacks,
Huddled behind the tall stockade?
Our guns, with muzzles set against the prairie?
What if I write the truth!
Your son is now a savage;
By that much more I love him!

If I should say
I can stand all this tropic, summer heat
And menial tasks and crowded alleyways,
And fat squaws lounging in the sun,
And even water out of tainted wells,
And long, rough prairie rides—
All for the sake of autumn,
And its short, magic days of pure content!

If you could know my mind!

A little British mind two years ago;
To-day a sort of crowded, pagan scroll,
Recording strange old customs
And legends, various as the Indian tribes,
And prayers and songs and dances.

Songs that are old as earth itself,

Dances as elemental:
Skin drums and tom-toms,
Rattles of turtle shell, and whirl of winds
Against the amphitheatre of hills.
You will remember they were playing Sheridan
When we left London!
I can count every lilac spray on the old drawing room chintz.
I hope—I hope you have not changed it since!

Let me begin again.

If I should say
I love this small, rough shack,
For it has made me brave—
Braver, at least, than when I saw it first,
And saw a sea of prairie
And the dim forms of buffalo herds
Darkening the far horizon!
I am braver now than when the halfbreeds came
Racing towards us on that first wild day,
Mad messengers to frighten us to death—
Servants of trappers and the Nor'-west men—
Those halfbreeds! feathers dangling, tomahawks!
That was in summer.
Still the buffalo lingered,
Cropping the blue-grey grasses,
Plunging in the muddy wallows,
Always near us.
I could almost touch a shaggy flank.

Two years ago to-day, in Piccadilly—

That tea-shop place the day before we sailed
He said, "It may be wild enough out there,
But I shall keep you safe—
Oh, I shall keep you safe!"

We loitered through that first bright autumn

And on the edge of winter had no meat.
Who wants meat, here, must follow it—and kill.
So, like a band of pilgrims, we set out—
Unguarded women are not left behind—
Walking beside our husbands all the way.
Far out of sight, the Indians
Search for the roaming herds.
They are on splendid ponies.
We settlers are the country's parasites.
When Mary Scott, the factor's wife, and I,
With two young squaws, were left a day in camp
We learned an incantation.
Another day when we were on the trail
My wedding ring was taken from my hand
Just as a warning,
A little necessary bright horse-play,
To show us who was master.
Five days of march and then the broad plateau—
White plains, brown beasts,
Red, flying figures of the Indian guides,
Bonfires at night and sleep in soft skin bags,
Warm blood of slaughter—

But—
It takes a letter sixty days to go,
Even at this season, when there is no snow.
Autumn has fallen on London.
I can see you in the sweet old room.
Please do not change a thing until I come!
Fires will be lit, your velvet curtains drawn,
And when you read my letter, dearest one,
Pray that some great day I may have a son
To mingle past with present.
For now each treacherous hour seems all of life;
I am as much a hunter as a wife,
To whom the summer is a breathing space,
Who waits for autumn
And trots beside her husband, through the grass
That shudders in the late November wind,
Or lies like frozen foam beneath our feet,
Looking for buffalo meat!

RETURN OF THE TRAPPERS

Against the rolling snowdrifts,

Misted by the frost-fog,
Dwarfish, pigmy figures,
See them come!
Open the gates of the great stockade,
Welcome them home.
There's my Red-Scarf!
I can almost hear him snarling,
"Marche! Marche!"
Down at old Fort Garry,
I have heard them say
That they take the women,
Who dog-trot behind them
All the way.
Not out here! Not out here!
With the glass at minus forty
Half the year!
There's the first big husky—
Think you hear his bell?
That is Henri leading;
Yes, among a thousand halfbreeds,
I would know his yell!
What you bet the sleds hold?
There's a slide!
Why that drift the other day
Stretched a half mile wide.
What you bet the sleds hold?
Fire the gun!
Here the women come, pell mell.
They've got ears, those Indian women,
Not much need to fire the gun!
Now we're in for days of steeping,
Matching, drying, sorting—rum.
Hear the whips crack!
Hi! Hi!
See, that's Henri!
Three, four, five—
Not one train lost.
Here they come!

AN OLD LADY

Madame de Courament excels at Bridge.

Hers is a clever hand,
Coloured with age and wrinkled;
But beautiful and tapering too,
Quite in accord with this old, stately room,
With crystal chandeliers,
And flowers and the warm tapestry of books.
Silent the cards fall.
Down the long avenue a dog howls at the moon,
A far, frost-sharpened sound.
The wind swirls up a little storm of snow
That blows against the casement.
A skilled opponent, Madame makes few mistakes
Like that a moment since,
When suddenly the dog howled—and we lost a trick.
She has a flashing wit,
Dinners at Rideau Hall are incomplete without her.
As someone said the other day,
"These elderly, elaborate folk
Are like a passing pageantry,
Gorgeous and of another day."
Silent the cards fall.
Again the far-off dog howls at the moon.

An hour later, "Chateau Laurier" she told the chauffeur.

And, alert and gay,
Wrapped in her sables,
She was motoring me the long white way to town
And gossiping of little this and that.
But just as we were nearing city lights
She said, "I saw you noticed that dog's bark.
It sounded almost like a wolf's;
It took me back to the Red River days.
Oh, it was fifty years ago, my dear;
I was as young as you ... It seems like yesterday.
Hardships! I loved it all!
Even the wolves, baying far out of sight,
Failed to disturb our rest
When we were safe at home.
The Indians were quite friendly—
And the eternal glamour of the snow!
And yet to-night, just when I heard that sound,
Sharpened by frost,
I felt an old pain strike me,
The knife-like thrust, before a child is born.
I was alone that night.
My husband had been called to Edmonton,
My Indian maid had let her family in
Looking for whiskey.
I dared not call to her.
For hours the Indians danced and sang and yelled.
I watched them from my icy-cold bedroom
Through great cracks in the floor.
Before they slept they sat crouched by the fire,
As I crouched up above in fright and pain.
And all night long I heard the wolves;
They kept a sort of savage company
With my own stifled cries.
To-night, my mind went back a moment strangely—
I always thought he had the sweetest face
Of any of my seven ... But then he was the first!"

She raised her glittering hand

And found the speaking tube, to modify her chauffeur's pace.
"And that, my dear, was fifty years ago," she said.
"The prairie was a very different place—
I never thought, then, I should come to Bridge!"

SPANISH PILOTS

To Agnes C. Laut

These were the ragged peon crews,

Half-bloods of Aztec women,
Of Spaniards and adventurers
Who were not seeking heaven!
But out on the broad seas driven,
And from the Horn to Sitka,
They searched for deep-sea findings
The whole unknown way,
With "small ringing of bells
And no trumpet blare,
Empty stomachs, and empty guns,
But plenty of prayer."
And if they failed of the findings,
Nothing behind but the branding irons,
Or slavery in the mines.
Yet they sang
As they sailed in their rickety death-traps;
They laughed as they rode,
And they sank as the rip-tide caught them fast
With a cry to the Virgin,
A prayer to the Virgin—
There was plenty of prayer at the last!
 WOMEN

ENCHANTMENT

I never see a blue jay

But I think of her;
Never hear that hoarse "dear—dear"
From a tree-top stir,
And the answering call
Far, far away,
And the flash of azure—
Oh, she would stay
Listening in the forest,
Loitering through the silence,
Hearing calls and singing
All the livelong day!

SHE WHO PADDLES

She who paddles swiftly,

Lithe and brown in the sun,
And dances, lithe as an Indian princess
In the barbaric days of splendour
Might have done—
She can laugh and jest too,
Play and wine and dine;
But none of these things have wooed me,
Bound me close by a mystery,
Made her eternally mine.
For we have found still places
Deep in the wood;
Climbed a ledge of grey rock
Where a pink-legged heron stood;
Heard the distant loon's cry;
Watched a lonely bird fly—
And she does not stir then,
Does not turn to me then,
But softly walks in the forest
In no great need of men.

DOWN NEAR THE GLEN

(In fear of fairies Irish women sometimes disguise

their boys as girls)

"I dress him sweet," the woman told me,

"All in white with a frill of lace.
See his hair
An' the curls that's on it!
Do ye know a girl with a safter face?

"If so I keep him till five or over,

There's not a one will steal him then!
With a saft wee girl
They'd never bother,
The thievin' fairies down in the glen.
"Never take chances!" the woman warned me,
"For a boy is the thing that sticks to your heart!"
But I was mad!
I had decked mine bravely;
He was moulded a man from the very start.

THE BOLSHEVIK

I met a woman of the Ward;

She was in gay attire;
Her blouse was blue, her toes were through,
Her ear-rings flashed like fire.

A little boy with lustrous eyes

Tugged at her coloured skirt;
His skin was warm as the southern born,
And he was caked in dirt.

Two women on the sunny street—

We fell to friendly talk
Of grocers' ways, and how it pays
To purchase as you walk.

I asked her, as a neighbour might,

If she had news to tell.
She answered me, "Oh, quiet-lee,
I think we soon raise hell!

"Too much we give to grocer-men;

Too much the rich have place;
More war to-day is the only way
To put rich in hees place!
"We speak a leetle, you and I,
Some papers scatter round,
Soon rich will be, quite quiet-lee,
All trampled on the ground.

"My man, he has a job all right,

But he might have much more.
Make leetle war, and there we are:
No rich man at our door."

The dusky boy with lustrous eyes

Listened to his mamma,
And then said he, quite quiet-lee,
"Most dear, to-day I saw

"One motor car that I will own

When I am grown a man!"
His beauty spoke, in eyes, in throat,
As just sheer beauty can.

And she forgot the little war,

The beckoning blood and dirt;
She smoothed his curls, so like a girl's,
And smoothed his gay striped shirt.

"Grow up, be good, my little boy;

One motor you may run!"
Her eyes burned deep, war fell asleep
As she looked on her son.

*****

I met a woman of the Ward;

She was in gay attire;
Her blouse was blue, her toes were through,
Her ear-rings flashed like fire.
 PAVLOWA DANCING

Footsteps of youth through the springtime playing,

Footfalls of snow in a blue mist straying,
The rose of Russia in a bright wind swaying—
A rose of fire and snow.

Voices chanting everywhere, but no word said,

Fairy bells from ancient towers signalling the dead,
Light love tuning viols while the dance runs red—
A flaming dance of death.

White barbaric winters and a sky star-strung,

All the hidden pathways, all the songs unsung,
Caught in flying footsteps over wild music hung—
She dances, and the Czar lies dead.

Oh, the cries, and martyrdoms, and fatal morns,

Scarlet nights and fiery wine and bitter scorns,
Dancing in a rose of joy from a field of thorns—
Rapture from a land of thorns!

CALVÉ IN BLUE

Here is blue fire

That burns mere youth away
And leaves sheer passion.
Out of the coloured flame
What pageantries arise,
As that caressing tone,
Through shimmering veils of harp and flute,
Seems to peer ghost-like down
Into a million hearts in nights long gone—
Into a million eyes!

There is a black mantilla

Of ancient Spanish lace
Over the deep blue gown.
The voice of Carmen sings again,
The mocking voice of Carmen, scarlet still
With love and certain doom.
In it there swings a sword,
And through it blows a laughing word—
That strange, and quite inevitable word
That time can never kill.

SIGN TO TRESPASSERS

Was ever a woman

Quite alone for a day?
Other women will come
Who should stay away.

Because my casement's open,

As I wait here for you,
Comes the faint Persephone
Trailing through the dew.

She has lived a thousand years,

Clasped her cosmic rose;
Why she comes to trouble me
Only heaven knows!

And there's another woman

Keeps whispering in my ear,
Till she has the whole house
Pierced through with fear.

Some wandering nun it is,

Whose lips can only pray,
Has made my house a cloister
In this dreary way.

And even now your taxi

Must be racing through the town.
(Will you love me, O my lover,
In this pale yellow gown?)

I have written out a sign

That I hope they will obey—
"For all Peering Women
There is no Right of Way."

SILVER SLIPPERS

I never wore slippers

On sweet April evenings,
But boots made for roads that we travelled in woe,
For morning and evening
Meant rough wayside places
And feet that were slow.
But now silver slippers,
Light-mannered, bright slippers,
Great mirror-like floors and a green velvet lawn,
Where we beckon with laughter,
With music, with dancing,
Sad youth—that is gone.

A FABULOUS DAY

Oh, the days of the week they are constantly seven!

And as certain to stay as the fixed stars in heaven.
But my heart that denies them will wander away
To find a more likeable, well furnished day
That I know exists somewhere, invisible, real,
And shining with moments the seven days steal.

The stocking I've wanted to darn since the spring,

The folk-song, forgotten, that calls me to sing,
The little old lady I hurry to see,
The cumbersome caller, long promised to tea,
Or the half-hidden passion pushed by through the week:
These surely may people the day that I seek.

Sometimes I shall play with a soul never born:

A companion I met on the far side of morn.
I shall nod at the losses I wept for last night,
And find my to-morrows expectant and bright.
But mostly I think the whole twenty-four hours
Will be spent in designing a new bed of flowers;
For everyone's heart, when it wanders away,
Has its own things to do on a fabulous day.