The poem is one long "if": the speaker imagines another world, and the whole thing is built from wishful pictures. The sky is orange or crimson, the flowers are purple, and enormous birds with dark, bloodstone-coloured feathers sweep overhead. Down on the street, fruit is piled higher than the houses, and caged parrots and mockingbirds fill the patio with noise. Even the sunsets are excessive, with several suns going down at once in violet and pale green.
The figures who return again and again are the tall women, waiting behind bougainvillias, lattices and open doors. Their low calls drift through the night, and the poem never says who they are calling to. That leaves a mood of longing, sensual and a little drowsy. Everything is ripe, bright and heavy with scent, yet there is also a hush, as if the world is holding its breath. The speaker seems less interested in reaching this place than in lingering in it, and the poem ends without any arrival, only more waiting.