that hop like silly birds
through the courts of Han
became sharp like little pins
in my ears, their hands in my hands
rigid like small ivory scoops
to scoop up mustard with
when I had heard the songs
of the western pools where the great queen
is throned on a purple throne
in whose vast encompassing arms
all bitter twigs of desire
burst into scarlet bloom.

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

On the house-encumbered hills
of great marble Rome
no man has ever counted the columns
no man has ever counted the statues
no man has ever counted the laws
sharply inscribed in plain writing
on tablets of green bronze.

At brightly lit tables
in a great brick basilica
seven hundred literate slaves
copy on rolls of thin parchment
adorned by seals and purple bows
the taut philosophical epigrams
announced by the emperor each morning
while taking his bath.

A day of rain and roaring gutters
the wine-reeking words of a drunken man
who clenched about me hard-muscled arms
and whispered with moist lips against my ear
filled me with smell and taste of spices
with harsh panting need to seek out the great
calm implacable queen of the east
who erect against sunrise holds in the folds
of her woolen robe all knowledge of delight
against whose hard white flesh my flesh
will sear to cinders in a last sheer flame.

Among the house-encumbered hills
of great marble Rome
I could no longer read the laws
inscribed on tablets of green bronze.
The maxims of the emperor's philosophy
were croaking of toads in my ears.
A day of rain and roaring gutters
the wine-reeking words of a drunken man:
... breast deep in the dawn
a queen of the east.

The camels growl and stretch out their necks,
their slack lips jiggle as they trot
towards a water hole in a pebbly torrent bed.

The riders pile dry twigs for a fire
and gird up their long gowns to warm
at the flame their lean galled legs.

Says the yellow man:

You have seen her in the west?

Says the brown man: