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Who is it waves to you out of the trembling fountain? Through flakes of blue that have fallen between scurrying grey cloud someone smirks and beckons.

Who can it be is making signs at you? Between the plump-thighed cupids that cavort with conches at their swollen cheeks bestriding mossy dolphins, someone in anguish clutches towards the sun like a cat snatching at a moth.

Someone down there is trying to escape, some too inquisitive tenant of this garden vanished before our time, who craning over the grass grown edge to see the sparks of hazy sunken sun catch the blood opals of the Inca brooch the old Infanta lost there years ago, slipped on the treacherous moss and tumbled in.

And now, tired of the gold trees and the singing flowers, tired of the topaz fruits and amethyst paved walks, tired of the ceaseless glitter in that unchanging, unlaborious paradise all fountains lead to, where no one sweats in the sun of burning wheat-fields, or wrenches the lurching plough in spring through the steaming earth on ruddy hillsides, or comes home weary through the plum-blue dusk, he hovers wistfully under the brink, tortured with longing.

And whenever you lean to touch the lily pads he darts a thin, crooked arm