AT BORDJ-AN-NUS
Ex Arai! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own!
O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is
That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to
the drone
Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love’s assassin sorceries!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight
of a kiss?
EI Arabi!
There by the palms, the desert’s edge, I drew thee to my heart
and held
Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning
back,
Smitten by Love’s forked flashing rod—as if the uprooted
mandrake yelled!
As if I had seen God, and died! I thirst! I writhe upon the
rack!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
It is not love! I am compelled
By some fierce fate, a vulture poised, heaven’s single ominous
speck of black.
E] Arabi!
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