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1.

 

Amid the evening’s purple hush,

Amid the dunes that sigh and blink,

A statue stands, and ever thinks:

How long ’til I shall turn to dust?

 

Asks the traveler: Where am I?

How did I reach these silent lands

Where nothing but a statue stands

That stares from out one single eye?

 

An eye of sleep? Or waking life?

That orb stares on across the drifts

Of angry sands – and madness swift

It stabs through men: a piercing knife!

 

The breezes breathe the fine sand grains

And blow them in a spiral course

Which veers into the mountains north

Then south, and dies amidst the rains.

 

Toward distant ergs the caravans

Roam off, and veiled are they by heat

Which rolls and waves, and ever beats

Upon the walker of the sands.

 

How many miles, how many weeks

One travels underneath the stars –

And lo! Here’re sacks, and chests, and jars

Of those who did oases seek.

 

How many miles, by dunes and rocks

One wanders through the choking drifts –

And look: Here’re bones, and corpses stiff

Of those who did in circles walk.

 

A stillness sits upon the stones,

And quiet drifts amongst the clouds.

This road leads on across the mounds,

And past one fig tree all alone.

 

These nights, these days, they veil and show

The pennants that in battle fell,

The vultures that on high boughs dwell,

And all the bodies picked by crows.

 

Oh see! Now comes the cusp of dawn;

This night doth haste unto its death.

Let’s spread our pillows, raise the tents –

Hard heat of day shall swell anon.

 

So pass the gourds – and we’ll drink deep,

For soon the sun shall wrap the world

With o’er-fond heat; and sands shall purl

About the shelter where we sleep.

 

 

2.

 

What art thou, in the rippling spring?

Thou seem’st a creature of good luck –

But thy look changes soon enough,

And now’s that of an awful thing.

 

A creature wanders in the wilderness:

It is the child of Misery

And Pleasure – and its mouths are three!

To chew the lost with cank’rous lips:

 

Once, when the rav’nous babe is born,

And once again when lust is known,

And once when all that’s left are bones:

The sad soul, in its house forlorn.

 

“My father’s corpse dreams in the cave;

My mother’s, underneath the tomb.

And every soul shall meet its doom –

Except I, who know not the grave.

 

“What madness comes here by the dawn,

These mounted men of rising day?

In morning’s glow, they ride to slay

The wretch from whom all hope hath gone.

 

“See the knights of silver maces

Riding steeds caparisoned

Against the chevaliers of the sun –

These bronze ones, with the golden faces!

 

“They rush headlong, the mumbling gusts,

About the peaks encased in frost:

These windy circles, ever lost

And ever seeking places hushed.

 

“Recline you down, think not of sin;

These wheels of air care not at all.

And calm thy heart with music’s balm –

The warblings of the theremin.”

 

 

3.

 

I once was told of something hid

That could the desert turn to green –

But it sits in a land unseen,

And’s locked under a secret lid.

 

The moon looks down, and thinks again:

How many pass beneath my rays…

And some are lost in nighttime’s maze,

While others by a guide are led.

 

A calf of gold gleams here, a king

Whose feet are mixed of iron and clay.

On gleaming neck, oh rev’lers, hang

Your garlands – so the thunder rings!

 

 

4.

 

The Judgment? It’s a word that’s said.

Yet still the days pass, one by one:

A long road leading toward the sun,

The waves and waves without an end.

 

Fair plains of paradise I’ve never seen,

And every heaven’s all unknown.

In blurry dawn I lie with those

Who in subconscious parlors sleep.

 

One million miles my soul did roam,

To Cathay, then the Hindu shrines…

And saw I creeks of shining wines,

And palaces within the foam

 

Where sugared sea met Orient.

How burnt the morning, melting clouds,

So that a syrup trickled down

To lend each thing its sugared scent.

 

The dreamer wakes in an empty room,

And the room is washed in light.

The walls are painted milky white:

It is the hall of bride and groom.

 

The cakes sit here on tabletops,

And chalices of wine, poured tall.

On walls and landings, through the halls,

The light glints off the clicking clocks.

 

By the shining of the dawn,

I leave the city, and I glance

Behind me – and I see by chance

A swallow fashioned all of bronze.

 

It warbles nothing made of words,

And yet its notes do speak to me:

“I own one eye that cannot see,

While my other takes in the world.”

 

 

5.

 

Where is the garden? I can’t guess.

But here are tangled, creeping cords

Of leafy life, slashed by the sword:

A path into the shy forest.

 

Behold a temple ’midst the trees:

A maze of halls… a darkened door!

Here is the place where blood is poured,

And flesh is eaten by the bees.

 

A serpent of three heads sleeps in

A vat among the incense cones –

When come again those wav’ry notes:

The music of the theremin.

 

Was’t heard at all, the voice that spoke

Through rooms of dreaming, in the morn?

“The flower’s grown, without a thorn” –

Yet neither man nor beast awoke. 

 

I trow it ever dies and fades,

Yet now and then awakes to life…

A time, two more, and half a time:

A rose bloom’s hidden in the maze.

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