Bells and Pomegranates, First Series/Cloister (Spanish)
II.—CLOISTER. (Spanish.)
i.Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!Water your damned flower-pots, do!If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?Oh, that rose has prior claims—Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?Hell dry you up with its flames!
ii.At the meal we sit together:Salve tibi! I must hearWise talk of the kind of weatherSort of season, time of year:Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcelyDare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:What's the Latin name for "parsley"?What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
iii.Phew! We'll have our platter burnished,Laid with care on our own shelf!With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,And a goblet for ourself,Rinsed like something sacrificialEre 'tis fit to touch our chaps—Marked with L. for our initial!(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
iv.Saint, forsooth! While brown DoloresSquats outside the Convent bank,With Sanchicha, telling stories,Steeping tresses in the tank,Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs—Can't I see his dead eye glow Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?That is, if he'd let it show.
v.When he finishes refection,Knife and fork across he laysNever, to my recollection,As do I, in Jesu's praise.I, the Trinity illustrate,Drinking watered orange-pulp;In three sips the Arian frustrate;While he drains his at one gulp!
vi.Oh, those melons! If he's ableWe're to have a feast; so nice!One goes to the Abbot's table,All of us get each a slice.How go on your flowers? None double?Not one fruit-sort can you spy?Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble,Keep 'em close-nipped on the sly!
vii.There's a great text in Galatians,Once you trip on it, entailsTwenty-nine distinct damnations,One sure, if another fails.If I trip him just a-dying,Sure of Heaven as sure can be,Spin him round and send him flyingOff to Hell a Manichee?
viii.Or, my scrofulous French novel,On grey paper with blunt type!Simply glance at it, you grovelHand and foot in Belial's gripe.If I double down its pagesAt the woeful sixteenth print,When he gathers his greengages,Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
ix.Or, the Devil!—one might venturePledge one's soul yet slily leaveSuch a flaw in the indentureAs he'd miss till, past retrieve,Blasted lay that rose-acaciaWe're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .St, there's Vespers! Plena gratiâAve, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!