  Western men, Your life is a minor rhapsody For flute and violin. With sounds, now shrill, now suave, You steal your hymns and frolics From the surface dirt of realism And the curves of sensuality. Your feeble mysticism Strains at the task of lifting tables And placing naÏve retorts Into the mouths of spirits. Your erudition is the vain Gesture of your repentance Grown over-thin and complex. Western men, you are beggars Devouring bits of guile Tossed from a violent mirage. The contours of a rose Bribing the quiet madness of evening With cunning promises of red, Are more important than your sweating love And the rushing dreads of your market-places. Will still arrange their subtle dream When your clever schemes of mud Win the drifting pension of dust. Your charts and diagrams Are merely a ragamuffin’s initials Cut into an ancient gateway That guards the invisible meaning of life. |
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