  Alas! 'Twas time to go—"Conceal the wine, The purple and the yellow infidel!"— Rice cooked in saffron, honey-cakes, and mast With many-coloured shirini were all Packed up in paunches capon-lined.... The Queen Sailed through the city, mounted high on Tous, Full in the moonlight, purer than the moon, Whose beauty, being weighed with hers, the scale Sent up to heaven and left the Queen on earth.... Followed quick tumbles to the lambent street, Graspings of shoes, and search for garments lost, With tunes that mounted all awry as flame Draught-blown, short breaths and straggling feet. The Dreamer Reddened and drooped his head; for at the Gate Sat a portentous Sheikh, thrice great in girth, Ali-el-KerbelaÏ, Known-of-Men, To whom—he slept all day—his nightly school Resorted in the porch. He saw, and shrugged His shoulders, rounded in glory like the hills That drift and clash about the Gulf of Pearls— Bahreinis tell the tale lest rival dhows Should venture into trade—and thus held forth: "Gossips, I have watched fools wander through this gate In generations. Never have I seen Men so bewitched by one closed palanquin, So little fain to chatter with the great, So blind, or single-eyed, they did not see Ali-el-KerbelaÏ, even me. "Poor souls! Dusk swamps our wriggling thoroughfares Like trenches; and I rub my hands to think How I to-night in coolth shall sleep and drink, While sunrise takes these vagrants unawares. Madmen set out each day to beard the sun, And seventy years ago Your Slave was one. "When all the world was young, that is when I Was young, I promised Allah to be wise, And started on the road of enterprise That leads towards the snow-capped hills of Why, Passing my hand across my shaven brow Heavy with all the lower lore of How." Ali-el-KerbelaÏ sighed his soul Out of his nostrils pious and serene, For the swift curtain of the night had slid Along the rings of stillness, as he peered Into the plain. The singing caravan Had dwindled slowly to a speck of white. Then said the sage: "Behold they go to nothing, These lovers, these far-eyed. To think they passed Within a foot of wisdom and my robe! Alas, they passed and knew not. 'Tis the risk Of all such noisy dreamers. Ah, my head Pities.... Well, God is great. And God made me. "Thus first I reached Mohammerah, whose sheikh In speechless gratitude besought a boon— To make me eunuch in his anderÛn— For I had talked away his stomach-ache. And of this epoch I need only say I had fresh dates for dinner every day. "But I was young. I spurned the unmanly job, For I loved conquest, and the world lay flat Before me like a purple praying-mat, And all young women made my heart kebob, Until the sheikh conceived himself disgraced. Then I took ship from Basra—in some haste. "We put to sea, fair sirs, a foul-faced sea Puckered with viciousness and green with hate Of all the sons of Adam; and black fate Conspired with her to take account of me, For all the Jinn who lurk among the gales Came down to fecundate our bellied sails. "They blew. They thrust my skull against the sky, The jade-backed Jinn disguised as ocean-swell, But I saw through them.... Down we went to hell, Where Iblis tried to teach me blasphemy In vain. No devil's wile could make me speak. Thus I learned self-control. (I was so weak.) "We drifted past bare cliff and jungle sedge, Past spouting loose volcanoes known as whales, And sirens that blew kisses with their tails, Till we fell over the horizon's edge, Fell sheer three thousand parasangs. And there I first discovered that the world is square. "We were in China, sir. The Home of Yellows, Soil, porcelain, manuscripts, men.... Here I spent Six weeks in stuffing to my heart's content The thought-scraps given to these whoreson fellows By heaven. My zeal picked all tradition's locks, And knowledge opened like a lacquered box "Wrought with strange figures.... Now I learned by heart Eleven score ways of dodging every sin. So, having sucked the marrow from Pekin, I planned with Allah that I should depart, And having thus obtained a ruly wind I shone like lightning through the schools of Hind. "I shall say little of Hind. Its mouth is wide With sacred texts and precepts packed in lyrics For carriage, verse unversed in our empirics. I grasped all Indian knowledge like a bride Without a dower, enjoyed and let her go, Giving God thanks that only Persians know." The singing caravan shrank in a clear Green sideless tunnel of the firmament. Ali-el-KerbelaÏ paused and watched Intent, even as by torchlight men spear fish, While searching flame-reflections brushed and lit The deep brown-watered caverns of his eyes, Where dim shapes moved profoundly in the pool. His listeners watched the sage in ecstasy Poise, concentrate his massive thought on Nothing, Heard his narghil |
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