Lilith

It dances with my blood: when my eyes caught it first I was like lost, and yearned and yearned and yearned, And strained like iron to stay my head from falling Upon that beggar’s breast where the jade stone hung. Perhaps the spirit of Saul’s young love lies here Strayed far and brought back by this stranger near. Saul said his discourse was more deep than Heaven.

For the storm trapped him ere he left the town Loaded with our week’s victuals: the slime clung And licked and clawed and chewed the clogged dragging wheels Till they sunk right to the axle: Saul, sodden and vexed, Like fury smote the mules’ mouths, pulling but sweat From his drowned hair and theirs, while the thunder knocked And all the air yawned water, falling water, And the light cart was water, like a wrecked raft, And all seemed like a forest under the ocean. Sudden the lightning flashed upon a figure Moving as a man moves in the slipping mud, Singing, but not as a man sings, through the storm, Which could not drown his sounds. Saul bawled “Hi! Hi!” And the man loomed, naked, vast, and gripped the wheels; Saul fiercely dug from under; he tugged the wheels; The mules foamed straining, straining. Suddenly they went. Saul and the man leaped in: Saul, miserably sodden,

Marvelled at the large cheer in a naked glistening man; Yet soon fell in with that contented mood, That when our hut’s light broke on his new mind He could not credit it—too soon it seemed: The stranger man’s talk was witchery. I pray his baking be as magical; The cakes should be nigh burnt.

[She calls the NUBIAN. He answers from within.]