Midsummer Night


Windows wide upon the whirring world

the curtain stirs

between the shadow-mouths of furniture

and shifting trees, between the brink of sleep

and forest-realms of badgers, foxes, owls;

the lapsing, rising breeze

deflects the nightjar, holds

one blackbird calling

in the dark wood; is the moon

vast, round, bronze beyond the maybug's

fumbling, the line of distant downs

still visible from Great Oaks Wood?

Vagabundos (from 'Songs of Andalusia')

Dos Gitanos - hombre y esposa
dos personas de piel morena
piel quemada en el sol del sur
endurecida por los vientos y arenas
del camino

Dos personas, vagabundos
líneas de su historia escritas en su rostro
expulsados de tierra a tierra
pobreza a pobreza
aferrando todavía, después de todos sus viajes
al espíritu, espíritu de su pueblo
capturado en la música flamenca
en canciones, gritos locos y salvajes
de dolor, humiliación y sufrimiento
espíritu gitano aún en las cadencies
de la guitarra



This is a rough translation - not intended as a poem in its own right.

Two Gypsies - man and wife
two dark-skinned people,
skin burned by the southern sun
hardened by the winds and sand
of the open road.

Two people - vagabonds
the lines of their history written in their faces
driven from one land to another
from poverty to poverty,
clinging still, after all their journeys
to their spirit, the spirit of their people
captured in the Flamenco music
in songs, in wild, savage cries
of pain, humiliation, suffering,
the gypsy spirit, even in the cadences
of the guitar.