The Poetry Corner

A Pre-Existence.

By Madison Julius Cawein

An intimation of some previous life, Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined, Of some uncertain sleep - or lived or dreamed In some dead life - between a dusk and dawn; From heathen battles to Toledo's gates, Far off defined, his corselet and camail, Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught A cry before him and a wail behind, Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings; Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves. And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's, Housed near the Tagus - squalid and alone Save for his slave, held dear - to beat and starve - Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon, A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones A visible hunger; famished with the fear, Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him - I, who held Him soul and self, more hated than his God, Stood silent; fools had laughed; I saw my way. War-time crops weapons; and the blade I bought Was subtly pointed. For, I knew his ways: The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems And bags of doublas - oh, I knew his ways. A shadow, woven in the hangings, hid Till time said now; gaunt from the hangings stole Behind him; humped and stooping so, his heart Clove through the faded tunic, murrey-dyed; Grinned exultation while the grim, slow blood Drenched black and darkened round the oblong wound, And his old face thinned grayer than morn's moon. Rubies from Badakhshn in rose lights dripped Slim tears of poppy-purple crystal; dull, Red, ember-pregnant, carbuncles wherein Fevered a captive crimson; bugles wan Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts; Fire-opals savage and mesmeric with Voluptuous flame, long, sweet, and sensuous as Soft eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed With talismanic violet, from tombs, Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans; Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of Golconda - This, a sandaled dervise bare Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun, Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon, Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held Of some wild tribe.... Bleached in the perishing waste A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones, A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull One blazing eye the diamond. At Aleppo Bartered, a bauble for his desert love. Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem jolting gem, Flashed, rutilating in the irised light, A rain of splintered fire; and his head, Long-haired, white-sunk among them. Yet I took All though his eyes burned in them; though, meseemed, Each several jewel glared a separate curse.... Well! dead men work us mischief from the grave. Richer than all Castile and yet not dare Drink but from cups of Roman murra, spar Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold! spar sensitive Of poison! I, no slave, yet all a slave To fear a dead fool's malice! Still, how else! Feasting within the music of my halls, While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes, Diaphanous, more silken than those famed Of loomed Amorgos or of classic Kos, Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed, Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolfsbane-slain!