like the dry rivers of Alcalá streaming with snow melt.

*

In the harbour warehouses clerks work on Sundry Accounts. They disclose each transaction’s symmetry – so lucid, so distinct – catching its fall through horizonless hours: Received and Payable.

They scratch across the pages like crows on winter hillsides

Of moon-cold lemon water for a quinsy. Of frosted grapes for Doña Ana’s wedding. Of bonito pouring silver from the purse net into barrels packed with snow. Of ice. Of treasuries of ice.

*

What prospects in our high dim rooms, what lustres in our heavens! Our estates unfurl like silk. In the streets, our carts and flags and running boys revolve in perfect order.

The cobbles gleam, rimmed in silver.

Slabs of ice drip under sacking. Glistening runnels creep, divide. Under benches where the creditors wait beside a warehouse wall, last year’s harvest trickles towards the harbour.

The blue sea hardly stirs.

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