Read Ebook: A Pushcart at the Curb by Dos Passos John

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Ebook has 450 lines and 32669 words, and 9 pages

There's smoke in the gardens of Aranjuez smoke of the burning of the years' dead leaves; the damp paths rustle underfoot thick with the crisp broad leaves of the planes.

The tang of the smoke and the reek of the box and the savor of the year's decay are soft in the gardens of Aranjuez where the fountains fill silently with leaves and the moss grows over the statues and busts clothing the simpering cupids and fauns whose stone eyes search the empty paths for the rustling rich brocaded gowns and the neat silk calves of the halcyon past.

The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez. And slipping by mirrors the brown-silver trunks of the planes and the hedges of box and spires of cypress and alleys of yellowing elms; and on the other bank three grey mules pulling a cart loaded with turnips, driven by a man in a blue woolen sash who strides along whistling and does not look towards Aranjuez.

Beyond ruffled velvet hills the sky burns yellow like a candle-flame.

Sudden a village roofs against the sky leaping buttresses a church and a tower utter dark like the heart of a candleflame.

Swing the bronze-bells uncoiling harsh slow sound through the dusk that growls out in the conversational clatter Of the trainwheels and the rails.

A hill humps unexpectedly to hide the tower erect like a pistil in the depths of the tremendous flaming flower of the west.

Genteel noise of Paris hats and beards that tilt this way and that. Mirrors create on either side infinities of chandeliers.

The orchestra is tuning up: Twanging of the strings of violins groans from cellos toodling of flutes.

Legs apart, with white fronts the musicians stand amiably as pelicans.

Tap. Tap. Tap. With a silken rustle beards, hats sink back in appropriate ecstasy. A little girl giggles. Crystals of infinities of chandeliers tremble in the first long honey-savored chord.

From under a wide black hat curving just to hide her ears peers the little face of Juliet of all child lovers who loved in impossible gardens among roses huge as moons and twinkling constellations of jessamine, Juliet, Isabel, Cressida, and that unknown one who went forth at night wandering the snarling streets of Jerusalem.

She presses her handkerchief to her mouth to smother her profane giggling. Her skin is browner than the tone of cellos, flushes like with pomegranate juice.

... The moist laden air of a garden in Granada, spice of leaves bruised by the sun; she sits in a dress of crimson brocade dark as blood under the white moon and watches the ripples spread in the gurgling fountain; her lashes curve to her cheeks as she stares wide-eyed lips drawn against the teeth and trembling; gravel crunches down the path; brown in a crimson swirl she stands with full lips head tilted back ... O her small breasts against my panting breast.

Clapping. Genteel noise of Paris hats and beards that tilt this way and that.

Her face lost in infinities of glittering chandeliers.

There's a sound of drums and trumpets above the rumble of the street. All alike all abreast keeping time to the regimented swirl of the glittering brass band.

The caf? waiters are craning at the door the girl in the gloveshop is nose against the glass. O the glitter of the brass and the flutter of the plumes and the tramp of the uniform feet! Run run run to see the soldiers.

The boy with a tray of pastries on his head is walking fast, keeping time; his white and yellow cakes are trembling in the sun his cheeks are redder and his bluestriped tunic streams as he marches to the rum tum of the drums. Run run run to see the soldiers.

The milkman with his pony slung with silvery metal jars schoolboys with their packs of books clerks in stiff white collars old men in cloaks try to regiment their feet to the glittering brass beat. Run run run to see the soldiers.

Night of clouds terror of their flight across the moon. Over the long still plains blows a wind out of the north; a laden wind out of the north rattles the leaves of the liveoaks menacingly and loud.

Black as old blood on the cold plain close throngs spread to beyond lead horizons swaying shrouded crowds and their rustle in the knife-keen wind is like the dry death-rattle of the winter grass.

Huge, of grinning brass steaming with fresh stains their God gapes with smudged expectant gums above the plain.

Flicker through the flames of the wide maw rigid square bodies of men opulence of childbearing women slimness of young men, and girls with small curved breasts.

Thicker hotter the blood drips from the cold brass lips.

Swift over grainless fields swift over shellplowed lands ever leaner swifter darker bay the hounds of the dead, before them drive the pale ones white limbs scarred and blackened laurel crushed in their cold fingers, the spark quenched in their glazed eyes.

Thicker hotter the blood drips from the avenging lips of the brass God; .

The clouds have blotted the haggard moon. A harsh wind shrills from the cities of the north Ypres, Lille, Li?ge, Verdun, and from the tainted valleys the cross-scarred hills. Over the long still plains the wind out of the north rattles the leaves of the liveoaks.

The weazened old woman without teeth who shivers on the windy street corner displays her roasted chestnuts invitingly like marriageable daughters.

The clattering streets are bright with booths lighted by balancing candleflames ranged with figures in painted clay, Virgins adoring and haloed bambinos, St. Joseph at his joiner's bench Judean shepherds and their sheep camels of the Eastern kings.

The streets resound with dancing and chortle of tambourines, strong rhythm of dancing drumming of tambourines.

Flicker through the greenish lamplight of the clattering cobbled streets flushed faces of men women in mantillas children with dark wide eyes, teeth flashing as they sing:

Beetred faces of women whose black mantillas have slipped from their sleek and gleaming hair, streaming faces of men.

With click of heels on the pavingstones boys in tunics are dancing eyes under long black lashes flash as they dance to the drum of tambourines beaten with elbow and palm. A flock of girls comes running squealing down the street.

Boys and girls are dancing flushed and dripping dancing to the beat on drums and piping on flutes and jiggle of the long notes of accordions and the wild tune swirls and sweeps along the frosty streets, leaps above the dark stone houses out among the crackling stars.

In the street a ragged boy too poor to own a tambourine slips off his shoes and beats them together to the drunken reeling time, dances on his naked feet.

The old strong towers the Moors built on the ruins of a Roman camp have sprung into spreading boistrous foam of daisies and alyssum flowers, and sprout of clover and veiling grass from out of the cracks in the tawny stones makes velvet soft the worn stairs and grooved walks where clanked the heels of the grave mailed knights who had driven and killed the darkskinned Moors, and where on silken knees their sons knelt on the nights of the full moon to vow strange deeds for their lady's grace.

The old strong towers are crumbled and doddering now and sit like old men smiling in the sun.

About them clamber the giggling flowers and below the sceptic sea gently laughing in daisywhite foam on the beach rocks the ships with flapping sails that flash white to the white village on the shore.

On a wall where the path is soft with flowers the brown goatboy lies, his cap askew and whistles out over the beckoning sea the tune the village band jerks out, a shine of brass in the square below: a swaggering young buck of a tune that slouches cap on one side, cigarette at an impudent tilt, out past the old toothless and smilingly powerless towers, out over the ever-youthful sea that claps bright cobalt hands in time and laughs along the tawny beaches.

How fine to die in Denia young in the ardent strength of sun calm in the burning blue of the sea in the stabile clasp of the iron hills; Denia where the earth is red as rust and hills grey like ash. O to rot into the ruddy soil to melt into the omnipotent fire of the young white god, the flamegod the sun, to find swift resurrection in the warm grapes born of earth and sun that are crushed to must under the feet of girls and lads, to flow for new generations of men a wine full of earth of sun.

The road winds white among ashen hills grey clouds overhead grey sea below. The road clings to the strong capes hangs above the white foam-line of unheard breakers that edge with lace the scarf of the sea sweeping marbled with sunlight to the dark horizon towards which steering intently like ducks with red bellies swim the black laden steamers.

The wind blows the dust of the road and whines in the dead grass and is silent.

I can hear my steps and the clink of coins in one pocket and the distant hush of the sea.

XX SIERRA GUADARRAMA TO J. G. P.

The greyish snow of the pass is starred with the sad lilac of autumn crocuses.

Hissing among the brown leaves of the scruboaks bruising the tender crocus petals a sleetgust sweeps the pass.

The air is calm again. Under a bulging sky motionless overhead the mountains heave velvet black into the cloudshut distance.

South the road winds down a wide valley towards stripes of rain through which shine straw yellow faint as a dream the rolling lands of New Castile.

A fresh gust whines through the snowbent grass pelting with sleet the withering crocuses, and rustles the dry leaves of the scruboaks with a sound as of gallop of hoofs far away on the grey stony road a sound as of faintly heard cavalcades of old stern kings climbing the cold iron passes stopping to stare with cold hawkeyes at the pale plain.

Soft as smoke are the blue green pines in the misty lavender twilight yellow as flame the flame-shaped poplars whose dead leaves fall vaguely spinning through the tinted air till they reach the brownish mirror of the stream where they are borne a tremulous pale fleet over gleaming ripples to the sudden dark beneath the Roman bridge.

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