gly.

The groom is invisible somewhere, but the bride
martyrs among us. She is clad in scarlet satin,
heavily embroidered with gold. On her head is
an edifice of scarlet and pearls.
For weeks, I know, she has wept in protest.
The feast-mother leads her in to us with sacrificial
rites. Her eyes are closed, hidden behind her
curtain of strung beads; for three days she will
not open them. She has never seen the bridegroom.

At the feast she sits like her own effigy. She neither
eats nor speaks.
Opposite her, across the narrow table, is a wall of
curious faces, lookers-on--children and half-grown
boys, beggars and what-not--the gleanings
of the streets.
They are quiet but they watch hungrily.
To-night, when the bridegroom draws the scarlet curtains
of the bed, they will still be watching
hungrily....

Strange, formless memories out of books struggle upward
in my consciousness. This is the marriage
at Cana.... I am feasting with the Caliph
at Bagdad.... I am the wedding guest who
beat his breast....
My heart is troubled.
What shall be said of blood-brotherhood between man
and man?

Wusih

The Beggar

_Christ! What is that--that--Thing?
Only a beggar, professionally maimed, I think._

Across the narrow street it lies, the street where little
children are.
It is rocking its body back and forth, back and forth,
ingratiatingly, in the noisome filth.
Beside the body are stretched two naked stumps of
flesh, on one the remnant of a foot. The wounds
are not new wounds, but they are open and they
fester. There are flies on them.
The Thing is whining, shrilly, hideously.

_Professionally maimed, I think._
Christ!

Hwai Yuen

Interlude

It is going to be hot here.
Already the sun is treacherous and a dull mugginess is
in the air. I note that winter clothes are shedding
one by one.

In the market-place sits a coolie, expanding in the
warmth.
He has opened his ragged upper garments and his
bronze body is naked to the belt.
He is examining it minutely, occasionally picking at
something with the dainty hand of the Orient.
If he had ever seen a zoological garden I should say
he was imitating the monkeys there.
As he has not, I dare say the taste is ingrained.

At all events it is going to be hot here.

The Village of the Mud Idols

The City Wall

About the city where I dwell, gua