FOR a moment, at evening, tired, as he stepped off the
tram- car,
— the young tram-conductor in a blue uniform, to
himself
forgotten,
—
and lifted his face up, with blue eyes looking at the
electric
rod which
he was going to turn round,
for a moment, pure in the yellow evening light,
he was
Hyacinthus.
In the
green garden darkened the shadow of coming rain
and a girl ran swiftly,
laughing breathless, taking in her white washing
in rapid armfuls from the line,
tossing in the basket,
and so rapidly, and so flashing, fleeing before
the rain
for a
moment she was Io, Io, who fled from Zeus, or the
Danae.
When I was waiting and not thinking, sitting at a table
on the
hotel
terrace
I saw
suddenly coming towards me, lit up and uplifted with
pleasure
advancing
with the slow-swiftness of a ship backing her white
sails into port
the woman who looks for me in
the world
and for
the moment she was Isis, gleaming, having found her
Osiris.
For a moment, as he looked at me through his
spectacles
pondering, yet eager, the broad and thick-set Italian
who
works in with
me,
for a moment he
was the Centaur, the wise yet horse-hoofed
Centaur
in whom I can
trust.