I

Grey riverbanks in the dusk
Melting away into mist
A hard breeze sharp off the sea
The ship’s screws lunge and throb
And the voices of sailors singing.

O I have come wandering
Out of the dust of many lands
Ears by all tongues jangled
Feet worn by all arduous ways
O the voices of sailors singing.

What nostalgia of sea And free new-scented spaces dreams of towns vermillion-gated Must be in their blood as in mine That the sailors long so in singing.

Churned water marbled astern
Grey riverbanks in the dusk
Melting away into mist
And a shrill wind hard off the sea.
O the voices of sailors singing.

II

Padding lunge of a camel’s stride
turning the sharp purple flints. A man sings:

Breast deep in the dawn a queen of the east; the woolen folds of her robe hang white and straight as the hard marble columns of the temple of Jove.

A thousand days
the pebbles have scuttled
under the great pads of my camels.

A thousands days
like bite of sour apples
have been bitter with desire in my mouth.

A thousand days
of cramped legs flecked
with green slobber of dromedaries.

At the crest of the road that transfixes the sun she awaits me lean with desire with muscles tightened by these thousand days pallid with dust sinewy naked before her.

Padding lunge of a camel’s stride
over the flint-strewn hills. A man sings:

I have heard men sing songs of how in scarlet pools in the west in purpurate mist that bursts from the sun trodden like a grape under the feet of darkness a woman with great breasts thighs white like wintry mountains bathes her nakedness.

I have lain biting my cheeks many nights with ears murmurous with the songs of these strange men. My arms have stung as if burned by the touch of red ants with anguish to circle strokingly her bulging smooth body. My blood has soured to gall. The ten toes of my feet are hard as buzzards’ claws from the stones of roads, from clambering cold rockfaces of hills. For uncountable days’ journeys jouncing on the humps of camels iron horizons have swayed like the rail of a ship at sea mountains have tossed like wine shaken hard in a wine cup.

I have heard men sing songs
of the scarlet pools of the sunset.

Two men, bundled pyramids of brown abreast, bow to the long slouch of their slowstriding camels. Shrilly the yellow man sings:

In the courts of Han green fowls with carmine tails peck at the yellow grain court ladies scatter with tiny ivory hands, the tails of the fowls droop with multiple elegance over the wan blue stones as the hands of courtladies droop on the goldstiffened silk of their angular flower-embroidered dresses.

In the courts of Han little hairy dogs are taught to bark twice at the mention of the name of Confucius.

The twittering of the women 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:

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 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.)

The guard of the tomb of the king’s great grandfather stood with two swords under the moon of gold. With one sword he very carefully slit the base of his large belly and inserted the other and fell upon it and sprawled beside the king’s footstool. His blood sprinkled the tulips and the poets in a row.

(The gongs are quiet in the temples. Men with hairy arms scattering with taut bows through the city; there is blood on new spearshafts.)

The long gold nails of the king’s right hand were held together at the tips in an attitude of discernment. The geometrical glitter of snowflakes, the pointed breasts of yellow girls crimson with henna, the swirl of river-eddies about a barge where men sit drinking, the eternal dragon of magnificence.... Beyond the tulip bed stood the poets in a row.

The garden full of spearshafts and shouting and the whine of arrows and the red bows of Tartars and trampling of the sharp hoofs of war-horses. Under the golden moon the men with hairy arms struck off the heads of the tulips in the tulip-bed and of the poets in a row.

The king lifted the hand that held the flaming dragon-flower.

Him of the snowflakes, he said. On a new white spearshaft the men with hairy arms spitted the king and the black slave who scratched his back with a back-scratcher of emerald.

There was a king in China.

IV

Says the man from Weehawken to the man from Sioux City as they jolt cheek by jowl on the bus up Broadway: That’s her name, Olive Thomas, on the red skysign, died of coke or somethin’ way over there in Paris. Too much money. Awful immoral the lives them film stars lead.

The eye of the man from Sioux City glints in the eye of the man from Weehawken. Awful ... lives out of sky-signs and lust; curtains of pink silk fluffy troubling the skin rooms all prinkly with chandeliers, bed cream-color with pink silk tassles creased by the slender press of thighs. Her eyebrows are black her lips rubbed scarlet breasts firm as peaches gold curls gold against her cheeks. She dead all of her dead way over there in Paris.

O golden Aphrodite.

The eye of the man from Weehawken slants
away from the eye of the man from Sioux City.
They stare at the unquiet gold dripping sky-signs.