Classic Poem

Cast down your eyes, lift up your souls,
Dig spoons into the great sauce bowls.
Eat roast and fried and boiled and grilled,
Eat jams and jellies, warmed and chilled.
Eat quails cooked golden to the minute,
Eat nut-fed lamb with raisins in it.
Who would the warm stout capon blame,
Date-colored with judicious flame,
Because he could not sing or fly?
(He eats the better.) Nor can I …
The golds of man are manifold
But Allah made this kabab's gold;
He made this purslane salad sup
The soul of olives from a cup;
He set these twin and ponderous fish
To lie on mint leaves in a dish …
I will be silent now and eat
A meal which poets shall repeat
In songs of cooking, sound and sage,
Down all the hungry roads of age.