Chapters

Poet

I’m from the desert country—O, it’s a holy land

With a thousand warm humming stinging virtues.

Masters, my words have edged their way obediently

Through the vast heat and that mystical cold of our evenings.

Many a star, the great lips of wonder drawn out, frozen,

Tempted me, and yet I held my tongue;

But came the long train of camels blowing drowsily:

Words paced, nodding, tinkled through my spirit;

As with the camels, I could never know nor wished to know

Their origin or destiny, for our horizon and the sky

Tremble together in uneasy connubial whiteness.

So my lawless words (I speak figuratively)

Moved the desert, as a train of camels waken

The dozing miles made for them, retreating slowly.

No, my masters, I was never happy there.

It is my first time in this big town of yours.

You are the law, you are the thick grey loam

Of orderly distances, unshakable houses.

Dispel, then, the haze and quandary of my early manhood.

Of course I am still—how shall I put it?—the singer.

And this One you speak of as the enemy of order,

As the wilful floating daze of refractory sunlight:

I do know that we could never exchange words

(But the tinkle and psalm of rubbing harness sometimes

Upon my word and image blowing drowsily...?).

Vah! You are the law, my masters, the thick grey loam.

I shall go to the temple with you, take Him in the act;

From the bed of the sick child He comes, from alleyways of the possessed,

And with this woman He shall speak His public perverseness.

The big stone in my hand will fly shrewdly, I assure you,

As your words, in the house of God.