DIRGE FOR THE CITY OF MIAMI.

Oh, what wealth of stucco flowers
Will save your memory for two hours,
When those dishonest faces fade
That bloom until the gangster's dead?
Where will we find a copper wreath
Appropriate to such a death?

The simple grapefruit in their grove
Shine like the face of childish love,
And sunflowers lean towards the south
With the confidence of early youth:
But oh, the red hibiscus paints
This garden with the blood of saints,
And the apples of the tree of knowledge
Gleam like nickels in the foliage.

Never did the drunkard think
To taste such bitterness in his drink,
So close to where the murderer stands
And sadly, sadly wipes his hands.
Never the forger or the thief
Or the arsonist so sobbed with grief,
And up and down the perjurer goes,
Picking his nose, picking his nose.

The thief and his girl lie side by side
And mutely fear the falling tide:
They'll find no place to rest their heads
Until they're dead, until they're dead.
But jungles full of golden bells,
(The lemon groves) will ring their knells,
As palms, with downcast arms, recall
The tears the Magdalen let fall.

Then, from a nameless meadow, infer
Some derelict, some passenger,
Some gentle creature buried there:
Because the downcast palms recall
The tears the penitent Magdalen let fall.

Thomas Merton.

St Bonaventure, N.Y.

DIDO.

Tyrian dinners sued the weary stranger.
To farm her fallows, harvest kings and queens.
Yet Cadmus was a planter, and his vintage
Is already wine in Aeneas' perjured veins.

Ropes and canvas and the chandler's tackle
Have bought a storm, a squiring in a cave;
The little cousin, with his glancing arrow,
Has taken gold, gold all that we have.

But crowns are off; now he's a prebendary.
The deacon's hood is up around his ears;
The Gods are back aboard, that are his cargo:
They're fed on blood of soldiers, and not tears.

Venus was got by nets, but not her baby;
Towns that would burn have taught him to beware.
Where is the Trojan, and his careless navy?
They sailed away from Carthage, that's a pyre.

Thomas Merton.

ARIADNE.

All through the blazing afternoon
The hand drums talk together like locusts;
The flute pours out its endless, thin stream,
Threading it in and out the clatter of sticks on wood blocks.
Drums and bells exchange handfulls of bright coins;
Drums and bells scatter their music, like pennies, all over the air,

And see, the lutanist's thin hand
Rapidly picks the spangling notes from off his wires
And throws them about like drops of water.

Behind the bamboo blinds,
Behind the palms,
In the green, sundappled apartments of her palace,
Redslippered Ariadne, with a tiny yawn,
Tosses a ball upon her roulette wheel.

Suddenly, dead north,
A Greek ship leaps the horizon, skips like a colt,
Comes coursing through the pasture of bright amethysts,
And whinnies at the jetty.

The whole city runs to see:
Quick as closing your hand
The sail's down.

Then the drums are stunned, and the crowd, exalted, cries:
"O Theseus! O Grecian Hero!"

Like a thought through the mind
Ariadne moves to the window.
Arrows of light, in every direction,
Leap from the armor of the black-eyed captain.
Arrows of light
Resound within her like the strings of a guitar.

Thomas Merton.

CONGA: LA COMPARSA EN ORIENTE.

Drums, at early evening, wake
Mountain and cane-brake;
Tambores, on the Alameda, call
One who rings gangarias with a nail,
One with feathers for sleeves,
One whose arms are birds,
One with a mouth full of great fires,
And lights instead of words.

One with flags in his hat
Rings his drum like a bell,
And brings the saints of heaven, with claves,
Down from the starlit hill;
A black angel beats an asses jaw
And (tick tick) a white, the claves.
The sodality of the Blessed Virgin
Follow after, carrying flowers.

Five angels beating bongos,
Seven saints, ringing their bells,
Wear coats made out of paper money
And shoes made out of shells.
They clatter about like a box of dimes,
Carrying candletowers, on fire,
Which they whirl as solemn as wise men,
Paper temples in the air..

Lights fly, like birds, behind the cane
And shot flies after, in gourds,
When the comparsa goes to the plain
With fires in her mouth, but no words.
Ten angels ring gangarias
When the conga goes away
With the mountain people and miners
To the flat land, Camaguey.

Then pray for us, Mother of Jesus,
Caridad, Merced,
Queen of Heaven and the three churches
That guard Camaguey.
Ten angels play gangarias and
The conga goes away.

Thomas Merton.