Kusta ben Luka is my name, I write To Abd Al-Rabban; fellow roysterer once, Now the good Caliph’s learned Treasurer, And for no ear but his. Carry this letter Through the great gallery of the Treasure House Where banners of the Caliphs hang, night-coloured But brilliant as the night’s embroidery, And wait war’s music; pass the little gallery; Pass books of learning from Byzantium Written in gold upon a purple stain, And pause at last, I was about to say, At the great book of Sappho’s song; but no, For should you leave my letter there, a boy’s Love-lorn, indifferent hands might come upon it And let it fall unnoticed to the floor. Pause at the Treatise of Parmenides And hide it there, for Caliphs to world’s end Must keep that perfect, as they keep her song So great its fame. When fitting time has passed The parchment will disclose to some learned man A mystery that else had found no chronicler But the wild Bedouin. Though I approve Those wanderers that welcomed in their tents What great Harun Al-Rashid, occupied With Persian embassy or Grecian war, Must needs neglect; I cannot hide the truth That wandering in a desert, featureless As air under a wing, can give birds’ wit. In after time they will speak much of me And speak but phantasy. Recall the year When our beloved Caliph put to death His Vizir Jaffer for an unknown reason; ‘If but the shirt upon my body knew it I’d tear it off and throw it in the fire.’ That speech was all that the town knew, but he Seemed for a while to have grown young again; Seemed so on purpose, muttered Jaffer’s friends, That none might know that he was conscience struck-- But that’s a traitor’s thought. Enough for me That in the early summer of the year The mightiest of the princes of the world Came to the least considered of his courtiers; Sat down upon the fountain’s marble edge One hand amid the goldfish in the pool; And thereupon a colloquy took place That I commend to all the chroniclers To show how violent great hearts can lose Their bitterness and find the honey-comb. ‘I have brought a slender bride into the house; You know the saying “Change the bride with Spring”, And she and I, being sunk in happiness, Cannot endure to think you tread these paths, When evening stirs the jasmine, and yet Are brideless.’ ‘I am falling into years.’ ‘But such as you and I do not seem old Like men who live by habit. Every day I ride with falcon to the river’s edge Or carry the ringed mail upon my back, Or court a woman; neither enemy, Game-bird, nor woman does the same thing twice; And so a hunter carries in the eye A mimicry of youth. Can poet’s thought That springs from body and in body falls Like this pure jet, now lost amid blue sky Now bathing lily leaf and fishes’ scale, Be mimicry?’ ‘What matter if our souls