Their songs trail among the split rocks of the desert.  

 Sings the yellow man:

I have heard men sing songs of how in the scarlet pools that spurt from the sun trodden like a grape under the feet of darkness a woman with great breasts bathes her nakedness.

Sings the brown man:

After a thousand days of cramped legs flecked with green slobber of dromedaries she awaits me lean with desire pallid with dust sinewy naked before her.

Their songs fade in the empty desert.

III

There was a king in China.        

He sat in a garden under a moon of gold while a black slave scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald. Beyond the tulip bed where the tulips were stiff goblets of fiery wine stood the poets in a row.

One sang the intricate patterns of snowflakes One sang the henna-tipped breasts of girls dancing and of yellow limbs rubbed with attar. One sang red bows of Tartar horsemen and whine of arrows and blood-clots on new spearshafts The others sang of wine and dragons coiled in purple bowls, and one, in a droning voice recited the maxims of Lao Tse.

(Far off at the walls of the city groaning of drums and a clank of massed spearmen. Gongs in the temples.)

The king sat under a moon of gold while a black slave scratched his back        with a back-scratcher of emerald. The long gold nails of his left hand twined about a red tulip blotched with black, a tulip shaped like a dragon's mouth or the flames bellying about a pagoda of sandalwood. The long gold nails of his right hand were held together at the tips in an attitude of discernment:        to award the tulip to the poet of the poets that stood in a row. 

(Gongs in the temples. Men with hairy arms climbing on the walls of the city. They have red bows slung on their backs; their hands grip new spearshafts.)

 Prev. P 41/51 next