Slow into Kum the Glaring trailed
The caravan. Its courage failed
A moment. Only dust-clouds veiled
The sun, that overhead
From fields The Plough had turned to grain,
Star-honey laden on The Wain
And spices from the wind-domain,
Was baking angel-bread.
(Astronomers in Baghdad say
That Allah gave the Milky Way
To feed his guests, the dead.)
Even as the dead the pilgrims lay
Until the sun received his pay—
Man counts in gold, but he in grey—
Then, whining as one daft,
A voice crept to each sleeper's ear,
And one by one sat up to hear
It soughing like a Seistan mere
Where nothing ever laughed.
A blur at elbow on the floor
Cried: "Sleep! 'Tis but the tavern door
Amoaning in the draught."
"Ay," said the master of the inn,
"A black-faced gaper that lets in
The dark, my creditors, and kin!
Last month it strained my wrist, did
The lout, so hard it slams. This week
Claims it for fuel. See the leak
Of air it springs! Its hinges creak,
Its wood is warped and twisted.
'Tis heavy-hearted as a man,
Stark, crazy thing!... It feels uncann...."
The wheezing voice persisted.
"Earth bare me in Mazanderan,
Where, breaking her dead level plan,
Steep foliage opens like a fan
To hide her virgin blush;
And singing, caravan, like you
Brooks dance towards the Caspian blue
Past coolth wherein mauve turtles coo
To panthers in the rush,
That turn hill-pools to amethyst.
Here bucks drink deep and tigers tryst
Neck-deep in grasses lush.
"And there the stainless peaks are kissed
By heaven whose crowning mercy, mist,
With cloud-lands white as Allah's fist
Anoints their heads with rain.
We never dreamed, where nature pours,
That life could run as thin as yours—
A waif thirst-stricken to all fours—
Or verdure, but a vein
In sandscapes wincing from the sun
That burns your flesh and visions dun,
Crawl throbbing through the plain.
"I grew. My shadow weighed a ton;
I held a countless garrison;
My boughs were roads for apes to run
Around the white owl's niche.
The hum of bees, the blue jay's scream....
The forest came to love and teem
In me beside the vivid stream
Shot through with speckled fish;
Till, weary of my sheltered glen,
I craved a human denizen
Fate granted me my wish.
"Yea, I had longed (if slope and fen
Can love like this, the love of men
Must live above our nature's ken)
To see and shade the room,
To shield far-leaning the abode,
Wherein the souls of lovers glowed
To songs that dimmed the bulbul's ode ...
And man became my doom.
He dragged me through the dew-drenched brake,
And took the heart of me to make
A tavern-door at Kum."
The pilgrims sat erect, engrossed,
Or searched the crannies for a ghost.
"Ah, heed it not," implored the host;
"This hell-burnt father's son
Moans ever like a soul oppressed,
And takes the fancy of a guest,
And makes my house no house of rest:
I would its voice were gone.
Yet be indulgent, sirs! 'Tis old.
Next week it shall be burnt or sold.
A new—" The voice went on:
"Here have I stood while life unrolled
But not the tale my breezes told.
Moonlight alone conceals the cold
Drab city's lack of heart.
Here have I watched an hundred years
Bespatter me with blood and tears,
Yet leave man ever in arrears
Of where my monkeys start.
No more, dog-rose and meadow-sweet!
The harlot's musk and rotten meat
Blow at me from the mart.
"No more, clear streams and fairy feet!
But through my mouth the striving street
Drains in brown spate the men who eat
And drink and curse and die;
And out of me the whole night long
Reel revellers—O God, their song!...
Are there no mortals clean and strong,
Or do they pass me by?
I little thought that I should leave
For this the groves where turtles grieve
Far closer to the sky.
"Instead of every song-bird's note
I know the scales a merchant's throat
Can compass. I have learned by rote
The tricks of Copt and Jew;
Can tell if Lur or Afghan brawls,
The Armenian way of selling shawls
Softly, and how an Arab bawls
To rouse the raider's crew,
Lest ululating strings of slaves
Should take the kennel for their graves....
Raids! I have seen a few,
"Or wars, occasion dubs them—waves
Of Mongol sultans, Kurdish braves.
They—Find me words! the Simûn raves—
They worked ... 'tis called their will,
Battered me in—behold the dint—
With all their hearts that felt like flint,
Besmeared the city with the tint
Of sunset on my hill.
My leopards stalk my bucks at eve—
I shivered as I heard them heave—
At least they ate their kill.
"I followed that.... But men who weave
Such flowing robes of make-believe,
I think the flood was wept by Eve—
Some sportsman shot the dove—
These puzzled me, for God is good
And man His image—not of wood,
Thank God!—At last I understood
All ... all except their love.
I grew so hard that I could trace
His hand's chief glory in their race.
Perhaps He wore a glove."
Then one without made haste to smite
The malcontent. It opened. Night
Stood on the threshold dressed in white,
And myriad-eyed and blind.
The ostler murmured: "Some Afrit
Or bitter worm has entered it;
Nor jamb nor lintel seems to fit.
I know its frame of mind."
"Air stirs the dust upon the floor,"
The landlord cried. "Fool! Shut that door
Amoaning in the wind."
"My glade was deep, a lichened well
Of ether, limpid as a bell
Buoyed on the manifold ground-swell
Whose distance changed attires
As sun-stroked plush, a roundelay
Of all red-blue and purple grey,
And, at each rise and fall of day,
Snows dyed like altar fires
Licked through those loud green sheaves of copse,
Bent hyphens 'twixt the mountain-tops,
Mosques of my motley choirs.
"And I, who gave them bed and bower
For nights enduring but an hour
Mid blaring miles of trumpet-flower,
Leagues of liana-wreath,
I saw the rocks through leaves and lings,
Could blink the fangs and feel the wings,
Thrill with the elemental things
Of life and love and death.
The purity of air and brook
And song helped me to overlook
The rapine underneath.
"But you—no! one dream more: an elf,
Askip on ochre mountain-shelf,
Who once had seen a man himself.
I used his wand to gauge
The sheen of moths and peacocks' whir,
To plumb the jungle-aisles, to stir
The drifts of frankincense and myrrh,
And amorous lithe shapes that purr....
'Tis finished. Turn the page
To where man cased his bones in fat.
His mate moved like a tiger-cat
Until he built her cage.
"You, I have watched you all who sat
Successive round the food-stained mat,
And reckoned many who lived for that
Alone; have seen the mark
Of that last state the Thinking Beast
Peep through the foliage of the feast,
And crown its poet's flight with greased
Fingers that grope the dark;
Have heard a cleanlier bosom catch
Her breath, and fumble with my latch
Irresolute. The lark
"My inmates never feared to match
Bespoke the end. I belched the batch,
Rolling them down the street, a patch
Of dirt against the dawn.
Then in its stead there came a saint,
Inventor of a soul-complaint,
Who gave men's faith a coat of paint
Like mine, and made me yawn
With furtive wenching. Here have sighed
Exultant groom and weeping bride
Led like a captive fawn.
"This way passed those who marry lean
Girl-chattels ere their times of teen.
I knew a like but milder scene:
A hawk, small birds that cower.
How soon the chosen was brought back dead—
Poisoned, the hakim always said—
The husband groaned beside the bed,
Arose, and kept the dower,
But swept his conscience out with prayer.
Man took the angels unaware
When he became a power.
"And what of woman? On my stair
The merchants spread their gaudiest ware,
For which fools bought a love affair
That ended in a jerk.
Enough! To round the tamasha
A bloated thing came by, the Shah;
It grinned, and viziers fawned 'Ha! ha!'
Curs, brainless as a Turk.
And all the women in his train
Beheld him once and ne'er again,
And called his love their work.
"You see, my friends, I tired of this
Wild doubling in the chase of bliss.
Pards miss their spring as men their kiss,
And yet the quarry dies.
I learned the world's least mortal god,
Whose epitaph is Ichabod,
May sport till noon, but if he nod
Shall never more arise.
Then, caravan, you passed, and I
Have solved my riddle with a cry:
The sad are never wise.
"Your song was all that I had heard
In dreams beyond the wildest bird,
That rose above my yellow-furred
Basses that bell and roar.
It took the heart of me in tow
To heights that I had longed to know,
To the great deeps where lovers go
And find—and want—no shore.
In these alone is man fulfilled;
And gleaming in the air I build
My hope of him once more.
"For all the few that see truth whole,
And take its endlessness for goal,
And steer by stars as if no shoal
Could mar their firmament,
For all the few that sing and sail
Knowing their quest of small avail,
Thank God who gave them strength to fail
In finding what He meant...."
"Poets!" the landlord groaned, "and poor!
This house is cursed." He banged the door
Behind them as they went.
And distance placed soft hands upon their mouths.