English

In life of time two rivers join,
One muddy and one clear;
Two days in time of life there are,
The soft and the severe;
You may trust time and life as far
As you would trust the spinning of a coin,

There's nothing like the blood of grapes
To give escapes
From care's infesting, festering apes.
To set the wit upon probation,
To give an edge to conversation,
To make a friend of a relation.
There's nothing like the blood of grapes.

Sleeper, the palm-trees drink the breathless noon,
A golden bee sucks at a fainting rose,
Your lips smile in their sleep. Oh, do not move.

Sleeper, Oh, do not move the gilded gauze
Which lies about your gold, or you will scare
The sun's gold fire which leaps within your crystal.

Sleeper, oh, do not move; your breasts in sleep,
Allah, they dip and rise like waves at sea;
Your breasts are snow, I breathe them in like sea foam,
I taste them like white salt. They dip and fall.

Sleeper, they dip and fall! The smiling stream

I passed a broken tombstone in a glade;
Thereon seven blossoms of anemone.
Said I, “Who lieth here?” Earth answered me,
“Tread softly. Here a lover waits the call.”
Quoth I, “May Allah help thee, slain of love,
And set thee high in heaven's highest seat.”
Unhappy lovers! Even in their tombs
Amid the living in mean dust they lie.
Fain would I plant this garden all with flowers
And water it with freely flowing tears.

The full moon would resemble thee, were it not freckled; and the
sun would be like thee, were it not eclipsed.
Verily I wonder—but how full is love of wonders: accompanied by
anxieties and passion!—
That I see the way short when I go to the beloved, and long when I
journey away from her.

I wished for my beloved; but when I beheld him I was confounded,
and possessed neither tongue nor eye.
I hung down my head in honor and reverence, and would have hid-
den what I felt; but it would not be concealed.
I had prepared a volume of expostulation; but when we met I re-
membered not a word.

The moon with sickly rays
Upon the deathly-silent thicket plays,
The moaning spectre rustles through the air:
Through mist and cloud and rain
The pallid stars in vain
Twinkle, like lanterns in a sepulchre.
Like ghosts, in silence, lank and lean,
A motley crowd in drear array,
Advancing with funereal mien,
On to the grave-ground wends its way.

Who is this tottering by
On crutches bowed, with haggard eye?
By iron fortune double bent,
His soul outpoured in long lament,
He staggers toward the slow-borne bier.

The Bedouin chieftain, Hafed, in his tent
Sat lone and desolate, for he was old;
His withered form with age was scarred and bent,
His pulse beat slow, his blood was thin and cold.

Ten years before, three stalwart sons had stood,
When down the west the sun was lingering low,
And asked his blessing, brave they were and good,
Loyal to friends and bitter to a foe.

The desert lands wherein their youth had flown
Too narrow were for more than one domain,
So Hafed bade them go and win their own,

She was young and beautiful
And golden like the sunshine
That warmed her body.
And because she was colored
Mayville had no place to offer her,
Nor fuel for the clean flame of joy
That tried to burn within her soul.

One day,
Sitting on old Mrs. Latham's back porch
Polishing the silver,
She asked herself two questions
And they ran something like this:
What can a colored girl do
On the money from a white woman's kitchen?
And ain't there any joy in this town?

Now the streets down by the river

What I notice first within
this rough scene fixed
in memory is the rare
quality of its lightning, as if
those bolts were clipped
from a comic book, pasted
on low cloud, or fashioned
with cardboard, daubed
with gilt then hung overhead
on wire and fine hooks.
What I hear most clearly
within that thunder now
is its grief—a moan, a long
lament echoing, an ache.
And the rain? Raucous enough,
pounding, but oddly