Sarabande for Andre Malraux

I think it will go on forever, this music
under the earth: majestic, processional, elegiac -
the solemn flourishes, the harmonies of strings.

Winds sway across the land, dustily
over cities and rivers, the remote valleys,
roads and lanes in their emptiness,

but for a few flowers: gillyflower, celandine,
  honeysuckle.
Who holds them? How many have breathed
their wildness here, their scents

blown from hands; and now their children
who come carrying them, posy or wreath?
Count them, all the colours to the last flower,

Spain, and then forget. The lives of your heroes
are myth. They do not exist, never did,
...