  The pilgrims from the north Beat on the southern gate All eager to set forth, In little mood to wait While watchman Abdelal Expounded the Koran To that wise seneschal, His mate, GhaffÍr Sultan. At length GhaffÍr: "Enough!" Even watchmen's heads may nod. "AsrÄil is not rough If we have faith in God." His fellow tapped the book: The Darawish discuss The point you overlook: Has Allah faith in us? Know, then, that Allah, fresh And splendid as a boy Who thinks no ill of flesh, Had one desire: a toy. And so he took for site To build his perfect plan The Earth, where His delight Was manufactured: Man. Ah, had we ever seen The draft, our Maker's spit, I think we must have been Drawn to live up to it. God was so pure and kind He showed Shaitan the lease Of earth that He had signed For us, His masterpiece. The pilgrims cried: "You flout Our calm. Beware. It flags. Unbar and let us out, Sons of a thousand rags." And Abdelal said: "Hark! Methought I heard a din." Said GhaffÍr: "After dark I let no devils in. "Proceed." He sucked his pipe: God in His happiest mood Laid down our prototype, And saw that man was good. Aglow with generous pride: "Shaitan the son of Jann, This is my crown," He cried. "Bow down and worship man." Said Evil with a smirk— He was too sly to hiss— "I cannot praise your work. I could have bettered this." God said: "I could have sown The soil my puppet delves, Yet rather gave my own Power to perfect themselves." Still the fiend stiffened. "I Bow not." Our prophet saith That he would not comply Because he had no faith In us. He only saw The worst of Allah's toy, The springs, some surface flaw, The strengthening alloy. Said God: "The faults are mine. I gave him hope and doubt, The mind that my design Shall have to work Me out. What though he fall! Is love So faint that I should grieve? How else, friend, should I prove To him that I believe? "And how else should he rise? Lo, I, that made the night, Have given his conscience eyes Therein to find the Right. I have stretched out his hand, Oh, not to grasp but feel, Have taught his aims to land, But tipped the aims with steel; "Have given him iron resolve And one great master-key, Courage, to bid revolve The hinge of destiny, And beams from heaven to build The road to Otherwise, With broken gloom to gild The causeway of his sighs "Whereby I watch him come At last to judge of Me, Beyond the thunder's drum, The cymbals of the sea. Aye, Shaitan, plumb the Space And Time that planets buoy, And you shall know the place Appointed for my toy. "I could not give him rest, And see him satiate At once, or make the zest Of life an opiate. I might have been his lord, I had not been his friend To sheathe his spirit's sword And start him at the end. "I would not make him old, That he might see his port Fling its nocturne of gold And cheerfulness athwart The dusk. I planned the wave, And wealth of wind and star. Could one be gay and brave Who never saw afar "The cause that he outlives Only because he fought, The peaks to which he strives, The ranges of his thought, Until the dawn to be Relieve his watchfires dim, Not by his faith in Me But by my faith in him! "I also have my dreams, And through my darkest cloud His climbing phalanx gleams To my salute, and, proud Of him even in defeat, My light upon his brow, My roughness at his feet, I triumph. Shaitan, bow!" But Shaitan like an ass Jibbed and would not give ear. Just so it came to pass, Declares our Book, GhaffÍr. We know that in the heat Of disputation—well, Allah shot out his feet, And Shaitan went to hell. Thus Abdelal. The gate Shook to the pilgrims' cry: "When will you cease to prate, Beards of calamity!" The poet: "Allah's bliss Fall on his watchmen! Thus Our journey's password is That God has faith in us." |
|
