XV THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE SHEIKH

Alas! 'Twas time to go—"Conceal the wine, The purple and the yellow infidel!"— Rice cooked in saffron, honey-cakes, and mast With many-coloured shirini were all Packed up in paunches capon-lined.... The Queen Sailed through the city, mounted high on Tous, Full in the moonlight, purer than the moon, Whose beauty, being weighed with hers, the scale Sent up to heaven and left the Queen on earth.... Followed quick tumbles to the lambent street, Graspings of shoes, and search for garments lost, With tunes that mounted all awry as flame Draught-blown, short breaths and straggling feet. The Dreamer Reddened and drooped his head; for at the Gate Sat a portentous Sheikh, thrice great in girth, Ali-el-Kerbelaï, Known-of-Men, To whom—he slept all day—his nightly school Resorted in the porch. He saw, and shrugged His shoulders, rounded in glory like the hills That drift and clash about the Gulf of Pearls— Bahreinis tell the tale lest rival dhows Should venture into trade—and thus held forth: "Gossips, I have watched fools wander through this gate In generations. Never have I seen Men so bewitched by one closed palanquin, So little fain to chatter with the great, So blind, or single-eyed, they did not see Ali-el-Kerbelaï, even me. "Poor souls! Dusk swamps our wriggling thoroughfares Like trenches; and I rub my hands to think How I to-night in coolth shall sleep and drink, While sunrise takes these vagrants unawares. Madmen set out each day to beard the sun, And seventy years ago Your Slave was one. "When all the world was young, that is when I Was young, I promised Allah to be wise, And started on the road of enterprise That leads towards the snow-capped hills of Why, Passing my hand across my shaven brow Heavy with all the lower lore of How." Ali-el-Kerbelaï sighed his soul Out of his nostrils pious and serene, For the swift curtain of the night had slid Along the rings of stillness, as he peered Into the plain. The singing caravan Had dwindled slowly to a speck of white. Then said the sage: "Behold they go to nothing, These lovers, these far-eyed. To think they passed Within a foot of wisdom and my robe! Alas, they passed and knew not. 'Tis the risk Of all such noisy dreamers. Ah, my head Pities.... Well, God is great. And God made me. "Thus first I reached Mohammerah, whose sheikh In speechless gratitude besought a boon— To make me eunuch in his anderûn— For I had talked away his stomach-ache. And of this epoch I need only say I had fresh dates for dinner every day. "But I was young. I spurned the unmanly job, For I loved conquest, and the world lay flat Before me like a purple praying-mat, And all young women made my heart kebob, Until the sheikh conceived himself disgraced. Then I took ship from Basra—in some haste. "We put to sea, fair sirs, a foul-faced sea Puckered with viciousness and green with hate Of all the sons of Adam; and black fate Conspired with her to take account of me, For all the Jinn who lurk among the gales Came down to fecundate our bellied sails. "They blew. They thrust my skull against the sky, The jade-backed Jinn disguised as ocean-swell, But I saw through them.... Down we went to hell, Where Iblis tried to teach me blasphemy In vain. No devil's wile could make me speak. Thus I learned self-control. (I was so weak.) "We drifted past bare cliff and jungle sedge, Past spouting loose volcanoes known as whales, And sirens that blew kisses with their tails, Till we fell over the horizon's edge, Fell sheer three thousand parasangs. And there I first discovered that the world is square. "We were in China, sir. The Home of Yellows, Soil, porcelain, manuscripts, men.... Here I spent Six weeks in stuffing to my heart's content The thought-scraps given to these whoreson fellows By heaven. My zeal picked all tradition's locks, And knowledge opened like a lacquered box "Wrought with strange figures.... Now I learned by heart Eleven score ways of dodging every sin. So, having sucked the marrow from Pekin, I planned with Allah that I should depart, And having thus obtained a ruly wind I shone like lightning through the schools of Hind. "I shall say little of Hind. Its mouth is wide With sacred texts and precepts packed in lyrics For carriage, verse unversed in our empirics. I grasped all Indian knowledge like a bride Without a dower, enjoyed and let her go, Giving God thanks that only Persians know." The singing caravan shrank in a clear Green sideless tunnel of the firmament. Ali-el-Kerbelaï paused and watched Intent, even as by torchlight men spear fish, While searching flame-reflections brushed and lit The deep brown-watered caverns of his eyes, Where dim shapes moved profoundly in the pool. His listeners watched the sage in ecstasy Poise, concentrate his massive thought on Nothing, Heard his narghilé bubble like a brain.... "From Hind to Misr. At Cairo's El-Azhar, The flower of Moslem scholarship, I sat Among the Sunni bastards. As a cat Watches the sun through eyelids scarce ajar, From dawn till evening prayer I laboured hard, Lolling in ambush round the great courtyard "To pounce on wingèd words. Athwart the arcade Midday in golden bars came clanging down Upon the anvil of each turbaned crown, And many minds took refuge in my shade. I was divinely hard to understand, Talking until my throat was dry as sand. "So to the mosque well—into it they pushed A dog who disagreed with me—and drew Relief what time the pigeons ceased to coo Or rustle round its rainbow-juice. We hushed Our flights of eloquence when my roghan Sizzled complacent in the frying-pan. "Mashallah, what a life! Yet in this scene I found a fleck of rust upon my tongue. Propelled by Fate and my own force of lung, I flitted with two reverend Maghrebín Whom I had favoured, having learned the trick Of speaking their foul breed of Arabic. "Immortal spirits led us, yea the chief Afrit, the crown of all the Afarit. We crossed the great Sahara like a street. My fame allows me licence to be brief. Enough. Whatever any sceptic says, I still maintain I spent a year at Fez. "Here was a sect that said one God was three. I plied Moriscos who had tasted two Beliefs perforce, I even asked a Jew To make this strange Tariqah clear; but he— By this judge Christians—he could not explain, Although his father had been burnt in Spain. "Ah, how I studied in that narrow city, Whose walls are changeless as a Persian law, And full of loopholes. To the seers I saw Is due the gamut of my human pity. We stirred the puddles of the human mind Till none could see the bottom but the blind. "Now Shaitan tempted me. I fell for once, A venial sin.... I journeyed to Stamboul To plumb the errors of the Greegi school. 'Twas there I read the Stagyrite, a dunce, The Frankish ruler of theology, And father of a dunce, Alfarabi. "I laid him low and hurried home to indite A book, the fruit of all my Thought and Travel, Entitled 'Contemplation of the Navel,' A mystic book. (But first I learned to write.) Such of our doctors as can read have read it. But I was bent on even higher credit. "I sought a cave whence madmen hunt wild sheep, And there for thirteen years I held my head, Until the dupes decided I was dead. Indeed I spent the better part in sleep, Lest I should be beguiled from abstract chatter By lust for this world's striped and dazzling matter. "Night brought me counsel, and a pock-marked Kurd Or angels brought me food. Day spared my dreams That tilled the solitude like slow white teams Of oxen, till it blossomed, and I heard The Roc's huge pinions scour the starry cobbles; And so I rose above all human squabbles. "For me the burning haze made sandhills dance, Till blushing shadows covered their nude breasts. The eternal heirs of leisure were my guests, And feasted on my glory in advance. Then on an eve among the eves.... The End! My soul sat by me talking as a friend. "I bleached my beard, and came to Ispahan. You know the rest. To Allah's will I bowed In suffering the plaudits of the crowd, For all must listen; those must preach who can. I stirred the town with fingers raised to bless.... And gauged the people by my emptiness." The caravan was gone. Its song survived A little, faint, an echo, not at all. Then like a magic carpet warmth was drawn Back into heaven, and left behind a void Where thin-faced breezes, huddling from the hills, Sat down to breathe hard tales upon their hands. And suddenly earth looked her age. Like her The shapes round Ali-el-Kerbelaï shivered, Pulling their coloured abbas to their ears And drawing in their feet. At last one spoke: "O master, you to whom the world is known, What is your thought's conclusion, what the sum Of added knowledge in the tome of You?" And Ali answered weighing out his words: "Sir, I have seen the East and West, great peace, Great wars, indifferent fates that blessed or cursed Their builders. I have touched the best and worst In flesh and thought, have watched flames rise and cease, Consoled high hopes, deep passions, men that die For things beneath the earth, behind the sky, "For god or woman. I have counted change For the Sarraf of Changelessness, have marked Kings, Wazirs, coursed by sons of dogs that barked And bit, the uninhabitable range Of power, where all that climb in others' shoes Are honoured and unperched like cockatoos. "Now having known mankind in hell and bliss Through thrice a generation, I have formed From all the problems I besieged or stormed One firm conviction, only one! 'Tis this: The Faith, the Pomp, the Loves, the Lives of men Outshine the firefly and outcrest the wren." He added as he rose: "But God is great." And bent, repassing through the city gate, Lest he should bump his venerable pate.