Until Farid Bahadur, cheapjack, spoke,
One bootlessly afoot whose years had brought
For profit this, to see existence clear
And empty as a solid ball of glass.
Erstwhile, he said, my peddling carried me
Clean through two empires like a paper hoop,
Setting me down upon the olive slopes
Where Smyrna nestles back to mother earth,
And so lures in the ocean. I filled my pack
With kerchiefs, beads, dross, chaffering with a Greek,