* * * * *
Ships and sea were forgotten.
We trampled
And stumbled
On, on,
Through the burning sand
To the hot shroud of the squat threatening forest,
Where, as you walked,
You tore apart
A solid sheet of air.
Brown satyrs grimaced at us,
Swinging with long hairy arms
From crooked branch to crooked branch.
The sun
Was at its height.
Rays pierced the hot shade;
White lines of light
Shot through the shadows
To where a point of green
Shuddered with dangerous movement,
Throbbed and hummed with the whirr of insects.
Birds more bright than any streamers from the sun
Cleft the air
Like hammers;
Scintillating wings
Tossed patches of colour
Into the dark shimmering air.
Shrill calls
Whistled like knives
Hurled through the empty heat.
Frantic chattering rose up.
Through the honeycombed darkness
Slim animals
—Their hides splashed with false sunlight—
Quivered away
Into the hollow distance.
Or clattered past us,
Cloven hooves
Kicking at the hard, bent trunks
Of gnarled trees.
Large hairy fruits of wood
Were cast at us,
Snarlingly,
From the darkness.
Faces
—Faces peered down
From the interwoven boughs.
Hastily we stumbled on;
Hurriedly we stumbled back,
Bewildered.
Small tracks
Tripped through the blackness
Hither and thither;
Twigs crawled from under our feet,
Hissing away
In venom
—And we were bewildered.
Then suddenly
We felt,
Rumbling in curling patterns through the ground,
The beating of drums.
As winds bellow into caves,
As waves swirl and curl into hollows,
We heard the blowing of wooden trumpets
And of pipes.
Soon,
Under the western canopy of the sun,
Where the fevered hills lay huddled together,
We saw great gourd-shaped palaces
Loom up like mountains.
Figures played on trumpets,
Twisted like snakes,
Or on the curved, carved horns of unknown beasts.
In the sound was mirrored
The panic seizures of the night,
—The fear of things that walk in darkness.
The drums were painted
In hot colours
That, even through the dusk,
Glowed torture and writhing torment.
Like a shower of molten lead
The din fell down upon us
From the Palaces.
Bare yellow women
Hurried
To greet us;
Their heels swayed inward
As they walked.
They offered fruits
—Fruits that were strange to us;
Mellow they were, and with a scent
Of sun, of summer,
And of woodland nights.
We ate
—And dreams closed round.
* * * * *