Читать книгу The Singing Caravan: A Sufi Tale - Robert Gilbert Vansittart Baron Vansittart - Страница 7

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Moussa, the son of the Crypto-Jew,

Had eaten his fill of yellow stew

And a bit besides (as a business man

He was far too quick for the caravan,

Who loved him not, though it feared his guile).

Moussa then: "I shall walk awhile

"To ease my soul of its heavy load."

His pious friends: "May you find a road,"

And winked. "His soul has begun to feel

There's nothing left but a march to steal."

But one from the village, decoying quail

For the governor's pot, came back with a tale

Of a lean arm shaken against the sky

Like a stunted thorn, and this piteous cry:

"As sound within an ice-bound desert mewed

Drags out existence at the very core

Of isolation, as breakers slip ashore

In vainly eternal whispers to the nude

Reef-coral, where no human feet intrude

Upon the purity of stillness; or

As, far from life, unmated eagles soar

Above the hilltops' breathless solitude,

"So moves my love, like these a thing apart,

Fierce, in the ruined temple of my heart,

Shy as a shooting star that peers new-risen

Mid strangers. Even so. Pent in the prison

Of space my soul, a lonely planet, wheels ...

Men call the sum of loneliness 'Ideals.'"

This is the plaint that the cross-road heard

Where it strikes from Kashan to Burujird.

The townsmen, met by the sun-dried stream,

Caught a voice high up like an angel's scream

Or a teaspoon tapping the bowl of heaven,

And they cried: "Ajab! May we be forgiven,

"But it sounds a soul of the rarer sort

Whose wings are set for no earthly port."

And the answer came, as they cried: "Who's that?"

"One that sells short weight in mutton fat."