PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Nancy Cunard

THREE PARTS FROM
THE LONG EPIC POEM ON SPAIN

THE INVOCATION

"Between a sea of green and a sea of gold,
Summer walking between, tell me in some gentle field
Tell me what life...yes, tell me what it means to you."

And a whole people answered for me: "Today,
A FIST ON A PURPLE, RED AND YELLOW FIELD."

1

It begins in Morocco, under the long-depressed Gcесcent,
With a voice in the night: "Turn out! Manouevres!"

And the Moors took

The usual dawn roads -- and then it all got different.

"Had we but known...for there are paths between the Morocco,
We could have fled, but we did not know."

Orered into planes, this, German, that, Italian,
Moors into Spain marched, gun at rib, wondering;

And came

Hungry, ill-treated, bewildered, bit of a race broken,
"Into lands of Spain, si señor, us, Regulares.

They told us then: "Fair in Seville; you, Guard of Honour".

The devil a Fair, but threats, blows, incomprehensible secrecy;
A train, a train and a train, and no place with a name -- for us.

Then in two weeks

Crashed doubt into truth: War. But whose war? Now we know.

We are not prisoners. We are deserters to the Republic;

Walked from that place of many arches -- Segovia -- a woman showed us
the way."

Oh Moors of earnest word -- you five I saw in Madrid.

2

It begins, for me, in a Montmartre street with a crazy footstep
Racing, pleading, at midnight: "I must talk to someone, you...

Listen, woman: if you knew how close it is,
The horror...can you stop it? Look at my breast,
Is it burned or is it not? I am an airman, I fell.

It is not that. They'll use me tomorrow again,

And I'll go wherever it be; I'm a commercial flier.

2

That is not it.

I saw my brother burn in the sky; I was a child,
Near Verdun, near Verdun — 1918.

Planes fall,kraying burning. I know hell. Do you know hell ?
And now it's coming again...

If you knew, if you knew — so soon — or do you know ?"

Gone with the wind of Ethiopia-laden July,

A scar of a man. What was it, foreknowledge, coincidence?

And then, in four days, in a roar of flames it began.

19 —— Barcelona —— 19, immortal July.

LINES FROM THE _E X O D U S_ PART OF THE POEM

For these

France was a virgin field, a pace open, ready
To write gratitude on, a field for the plowing under of pain,
A place of calm after agony; they came as a gift here,
And so the flocks came besides the gold and the cars and chariots de-
feated by hell —
But mostly came the hearts of men.

What was this frontier, tell me ?
A pass for flocks,
A transient mile between those final rocks,
A strangulation with a shining end,
Hell's funnel —

So they saw it, waiting 10,000 deep each day to climb their gehenna.

Sometime, somewhere, between bristled sabres and shining stamping platoons,
Peace! After the chesty sergeants and General Staffs barking orders across their way,
Rest!

And the Sister Republic answered:
"We hate you".

If these frontier things must be, they thought, next hours must bring
That change when man becomes man again with his lamb at his side
On the green of earth resting, under the almost Spanish sun.

Climbing gehenna they thought:

"Aren't we seres humanos?

But the frontier — what is a frontier?"

"Give us arms to fight or let us in", said the old man plodding downhill to Spain,

Telling me: "Back to Junquera ! Turned back ! !

What means a "frontier" ? This ! Now we search the ground

For any piece of food that might have dropped when we passed before—

Back to Junquera for "permits" — to enter what ? France !

That is what this frontier means: a line at the end of starvation,
30 and more months of death, treacheries... all that has been...

72 am I. I was mayor of my place

In Asturias, and many a foul deed have I known,

2

But this, such as this, never! It is inconceivable.
All night we stood on that line, the "frontier", in the roar of rain;
I saw a woman give birth on the road, an old man die,
— Something like 3,000 of us there — people fainting, gangrene growing
in wounds...
And now, they turn us back. We are looking for food at our feet.
Have you seen any bit of food? What should we do — ay, what shall
we do?

I have seen, I have seen
All the poor woof and weave, the drapery of exodus
Rotted with rain in one night, transposed into compost,
A fit hymn for the conqueror — along with one pale dead ass,
Les quatre fers en l'air, death's humble and monstrous belly;
Seen many a foul deed done...heard the hearts of men break,
Seen the blood of Spain's truth grow dark — but no waste scrap of food.

"It is not right, compañero, — they are mad in France, compañero,
Because it's coming to them, the same tide;
We should have fought it till victory, compañero, we by their side.
But now, back to Junquera, on this road with no piece of food..."

Is there pardon for Franco on this in a mile of centuries?
The triumph of hell nears completion.

A whole people has walked away.

THIS PART COMES VERY NEAR THE END OF THE POEM -- IT IS
" THE PROMISED LAND "

You, milito, my son, my lover, my son,
You are free now, free... you that went to kill bulls in Avila
And found the priests with their guns there, the black snake with
its head up.

You are free, free to grove still, but free to live again too.
We have left Europe, changed the North Star for the southern Cross,
Look! Here it all begins. It begins at Mendonça,
After the weary wonder, the Pampas in the Argentine's dust-robe.
We drank beer without cease crossing them, thought of nothing --
as far as that is possible...

Look! Here it begins. We are in it. It has begun.

What does it mean, this note scribbled in the crazy car
Curvetting through a grey dawn, these words: "The two passes -- Exodus?"
I remember -- the pass of death, the Pyrenean; the pass to life,
the Andes;

The Andes, the Andes, the Andes -- that word is a name for life.

And then:

"Desprecio a la palabra en Europa, a la poesía, a la verdad."

You are eloquent my notes of that morning, you say further
(Of the sea-journey and arrival) "It begins and it ends in colours.

Colour of sea in a hostile land, the white on the grey."

Seven days abeam anchored waiting the convoy in the mouth of the
Gironde,

Frozen, benighted, spectral, raging, inarticulate --

Two hours at noon for a painter -- the white on the grey --

But for a poet, these: crispation, paralysis.

Ay, the end of France was the itch and the histoires de gendarmes,

A meet end -- with its passes and permits -- to a life there of 20 years.

Start of the passage to the New World, the note says:

Exit, suspended in pallor, pastels, Impressionists."

We had Life-belt and life-boat drill one day, the crew with gasmasks,
A paternal captain and 173 scared Portuguese emigrants;

We had Lisbon at coaling-time, the black devils enacting hell

With their spades and buckets, and the roar of the coal down the chute;

Cents a day for this, 20. We had Casablanca, Dakar,

Arab misery, giant Senegal, with gore, past womb of pain;

2

Here the slaves came in their coffles, from here was "the Middle Passage"--
Today the Old Fort, the Slave-House, at last it is empty.

Daker, foul with colonial purport, replendent with Negro strength.
Days and more days -- then the Equator,

A lake of milk and mirages and birds that were flying fish.
We had Rio -- oh New World, you first at Rio..

Went ashore in a blast of Carnaval, devoured you, adored you;
And Santos -- oh harbours and tropics in a beauty that never ends.
And in Montevideo, friends, and the colours of Spain-my-Spain.

Another colour -- waters of Rio Plata, before Buenos Aires;
It is the opal avain, a tawny and turbid opal, not that of Madrid.

The car -- it is in the Andes now, and the note stagers:
"It ends with this, the Grand Approach,
It ends in Chile, with freedom.

Look ! Here is the miracle,
And light on the miracle;

The light, you can almost touch it.

A cactus grows in the snow here, when it is the time of snows.

Look ! Here are horses, and no man near them,
For the horses here, they are wild, they are wild, they are free.

-- And then the great line of the summits, look, at the top of a curve,
Older than all the gods of earth, surging up at one go,
One higher than all the rest -- all saying: "Eternity".

Can we leave our pain at the foot of the eternal snows..?
And the highest says: 'Behold me; I am Aconcagua'.

How many miles have we come ? Here are no miles, only time,
Only continuance, and colour mating with colour.

And then a note says:

"Glück in a field composed, sometimes,

In a green field, on his piano, with golden wine

And bird-song and wind over flowers, and made such rhymes

And waves of sound all hearers wept with ecstasy..."

Why do I think of Glück here -- it is because of that, the ecstacy.

The Andes are singing to me; they are sound made visible, there are words even, in a message,

They pull me, they hold me, they say: "Stay, you are part of us.""

3

And where are we now ? In Uspallata, the sole man-made in all of this,
A tawny road reeling, an inn with waters and the sauce llorón.

It is almost noon, and the car bounds on again --

And then and then, tell me my note, what did you say ?

"I have seen noon here, noon burst open in all its colours,
Colour, eternal as stone, by the Tomb of the Inca --

The colours change every few miles..

There is water here too, the Rio Mendoza."

There is water... here raged the waters of avalanche, the aluvión,
Destruction, monumental, on a scale with the Andes,

A few years back. And the driver said: "Here too

Passed the armies of Liberation, General San Martin and the emancipation
of the two countries

From the tyrant Spain."

And my last note says:

"What is this frontier, tell me ?

The Pass to Eternity --"

The journey is near its end -- height carved out in rock, ridge upon
ridge,

A little train in a world of stone, descent into a green world, trees,
maize and water,

You are in Chile, milite, you have reached the Promised Land --

All life is a long or a little train,

And weary the heart, the foot-loose heart, the Spanish heart,

In its cell, beating and waiting, beating and waiting.

Take freedom today oh heart -- for as to me

These things I saw them through a veil of pain...

Of pain, of pain -- Ah how it comes

Repeating with a pulse of drums,

And seldom does their rhythm still --

Drums for the knife that's mate to love,

Love is my fate, love is my ill,

My innost meaning, utmost loss,

My spring, my lock and key, my wild

Ninth wave that rages your stone --

These things are nothing to you, child,

Maker of pain, undone by pain,

Or are they ?

And must the tide and temper of it rage ever so ?