dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Osbert Sitwell

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Maxixe

Osbert Sitwell

  • Los enanitos
  • Se enojaren
  • (Old Mexican Song)

  • THE MEXICAN dwarfs can dance for miles,

    Stamping their feet and scattering smiles;

    Till the loud hills laugh and laugh again

    At the dancing dwarfs in the golden plain,

    Till the bamboos sing as the dwarfs dance by

    Kicking their feet at a jagged sky,

    That, torn by leaves and gashed by hills,

    Rocks to the rhythm the hot sun shrills.

    The bubble sun sketches shadows that pass

    To noiseless jumping-jacks of glass

    So long and thin, so silent and opaque,

    That the lions shake their orange manes, and quake,

    And a shadow that leaps over Popocatepetl

    Terrifies the tigers, as they settle

    Cat-like limbs cut with golden bars

    Under bowers of flowers that shimmer like stars.

    Buzzing of insects flutters above,

    Shaking the rich trees’ treasure-trove

    Till the fruit rushes down, like a comet whose tail

    Thrashes the night with its golden flail.

    The fruit hisses down with a plomp from its tree,

    Like the singing of a rainbow as it dips into the sea.

    Loud red trumpets of great blossoms blare

    Triumphantly like heralds who blow a fanfare;

    Till the humming-bird, bearing heaven on its wing,

    Flies from the terrible blossoming,

    And the humble honey-bee is frightened by the fine

    Honey that is heavy like money, and purple like wine;

    While birds that flaunt their pinions like pennons

    Shriek from their trees of oranges and lemons,

    And the scent rises up in a cloud, to make

    The hairy swinging monkeys feel so weak

    That they each throw down a bitten cocoanut or mango.

    Up flames a flamingo over the fandango;

    Glowing like a fire, and gleaming like a ruby,

    From Guadalajara to Guadalupe

    It flies; in flying drops a feather …

    And the snatching dwarfs stop dancing and fight together.