I

 Grey riverbanks in the dusk Melting away into mist A hard breeze sharp off the sea The ship's screws lunge and throb And the voices of sailors singing.

O I have come wandering Out of the dust of many lands Ears by all tongues jangled Feet worn by all arduous ways—       O the voices of sailors singing.

 What nostalgia of sea And free new-scented spaces dreams of towns vermillion-gate Must be in their blood as in mine That the sailors long so in singing.

 Churned water marbled astern Grey riverbanks in the dusk Melting away into mist And a shrill wind hard off the sea. O the voices of sailors singing.

II

Padding lunge of a camel's stride turning the sharp purple flints. A man sings:

Breast deep in the dawn a queen of the east; the woolen folds of her robe hang white and straight as the hard marble columns of the temple of Jove.

A thousand days the pebbles have scuttled under the great pads of my camels.

  A thousands days like bite of sour apples have been bitter with desire in my mouth.

 A thousand days of cramped legs flecked with green slobber of dromedaries.

At the crest of the road that transfixes the sun she awaits me lean with desire with muscles tightened by these thousand days pallid with dust sinewy naked before her.

Padding lunge of a camel's stride over the flint-strewn hills. A man sings:

I have heard men sing songs of how in scarlet pools in the west in purpurate mist that bursts from the sun trodden like a grape under the feet of darkness a woman with great breasts thighs white like wintry mountains bathes her nakedness.

 I have lain biting my cheeks many nights with ears murmurous with the songs of these strange men. My arms have stung as if burned by the touch of red ants with anguish to circle strokingly her bulging 

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