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: