hungrily at your fingers,
but always before you grasp his hand,
the steel edged wind flashing between
shatters from the mirrored glass
his despairing image.
VI
Stunned by the August sun
and drunk with scent of parching leaves
I lay stretched on the wall,
when suddenly, as a ripe seed shoots
from the rind of a bursting pomegranate,
an enchanter robed in hornet yellow,
with a watered scimitar in his belt
and a turban like a crinkled marigold,
popped from the hot orchard earth.
On slippers poppy crisp
he advanced holding towards me
with a gesture grandiloquently imperious,
a key of age-greened bronze.
It was the key to Aladdin's paradise.
But the flames of the sun,
the scent of burning earth, of blistering leaves,
had scorched me with such delicious languor
that I only answered:
A humble visitor in the garden
begs the excellent magician to bestow
elsewhere his estimable gift.
Lurid rage distorted the bronze features,
sultry thunder shook the thirsty garden,
a buzzing of innumerable wasps
numbed the breathless air
