Hills and valleys
stony roads.
In the towns
the bright eyes of women
looking out from lattices.
Camps in the desert
where men passed the time of day
where were embers of fires
and greenish piles of camel-dung.

You have seen her in the east?

Says the yellow man:

Only red mountains and bare plains,
the blue smoke of villages at evening,
brown girls bathing
along banks of streams.

I have slept with no woman
only my dream.

Says the brown man:

I have looked in no woman's eyes
only stared along eastward roads.

They eat out of copper bowls beside the fire in silence.
They loose the hobbles from the knees of their camels
and shout as they jerk to their feet.
The yellow man rides west.
The brown man rides east.

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