Camel

three poems

CAMEL

Wild white camel, camel wild, what behind

Your odd-toed feet uncoils no visible trail?

Deep oases hid from the slow caravans:

You are two-humped incredible moan's hound,

You kneel not nor know how dun camels quail.

Fill you your furred hump in full glare of bans?

Camel white, they mutter and say you previse

The hordes that will rush with some hot fierce simoon,

The holy mad desert horse-riding Riffs;

That your Indian neck in Africa will rise

In unseeable speed, will flash night and noon.

You anticipate, your smoked nostril sniffs.

Wild camel, the Tartar will uproll to the West,

Himalayas sink to scarps when you smoke

The explosive split air of the eastern plateaux,

Your undulant shape will lay the smoked waste.

Was it you the low-smiling fakirs bespoke

And you the untold mystery under black snows?

Wild camel unborn reincarnate spore,

Why know we not all the legend of humps?

What! White moves unseen against dark eastern light?

Unseen humps out a myriad in feral war?

Unheard your peculiar foot stamp stamps,

Thump against loud whiteness foreseeing no night.