Florence Wilkinson

AT every pelhourinho’s ledge

Faces to set my teeth on edge—

Gray gossips, like a dusty hedge,

Whisper and crackle.

I lean at Alcobaca, dim

With fig-leaves twisted round its rim.

Pauses a slim

Tall maid. Her name?—A Latin hymn,

Gloria da Madre de Deus;

A white-rose face dipped tremulous—

A profile carved as nobly clear

As love-child of Aurelius.

White-clad, barefoot and straight she stood,

Vase-bearing nymph ripe to be wooed

In some delicious interlude.

……….

What need now to remember more?—

The tiled and twisted fountain’s pour,

The vase forgotten on the floor,

The white street ending in her door;

Her head, a dark flower on a stem;

Her diadem

Of heavy hair, the Moorish low estalegem;

Outside, the stillness and white glare

Of Alcobaca’s noonday square;

My hands that dare—

The beauty of her loosened hair:

White shift, white door, the white still street;

Her lips, her arms, her throat, her feet;

After a while—the bread and meat,

A dewy jar of cool red wine,

Olives that glisten wet with brine.

White rose of Alcobaca—mine—

We kiss again above the wine!

……….

The red wine drunk, the broken crust,

We parted as all lovers must.

Madre in gloria, be thou just

To that frail glory—

A white rose fallen into dust!