from Odes: 30. The Orotava Road

By Basil Bunting 1900–1985 Basil Bunting

Four white heifers with sprawling hooves

trundle the waggon.

Its ill-roped crates heavy with fruit sway.

The chisel point of the goad, blue and white,

glitters ahead,

a flame to follow lance-high in a man’s hand

who does not shave. His linen trousers

like him want washing.

You can see his baked skin through his shirt.

He has no shoes and his hat has a hole in it.

‘Hu ! vaca ! Hu ! vaca !’

he says staccato without raising his voice;

‘Adios caballero’ legato but

in the same tone.

Camelmen high on muzzled mounts

boots rattling against the panels

of an empty

packsaddle do not answer strangers.

Each with his train of seven or eight tied

head to tail they

pass silent but for the heavy bells

and plip of slobber dripping from

muzzle to dust;

save that on sand their soles squeak slightly.

Milkmaids, friendly girls between

fourteen and twenty

or younger, bolt upright on small

trotting donkeys that bray (they arch their

tails a few inches

from the root, stretch neck and jaw forward

to make the windpipe a trumpet)

chatter. Jolted

cans clatter. The girls’ smiles repeat

the black silk curve of the wimple

under the chin.

Their hats are absurd doll’s hats

or flat-crowned to take a load.

All have fine eyes.

You can guess their balanced nakedness

under the cotton gown and thin shift.

They sing and laugh.

They say ‘Adios!’ shyly but look back

more than once, knowing our thoughts

and sharing our

desires and lack of faith in desire.

Basil Bunting, “30. The Orotava Road” from Complete Poems, edited by Richard Caddel. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd., www.bloodaxebooks.com.

Source: Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1968)

Biography

Basil Bunting, described as "the last minor master of the modernist mode" by Donald Hall in the New York Times Book Review, achieved his greatest popularity in the mid-1960s as one of the leaders of the new British literary avant-garde. Bunting's work was not always well-received; much of his early writing went largely unnoticed for years due to a mistaken association with Mussolini. Ezra Pound, an admirer of Bunting's poetry, . . .

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