Nubian

[Eagerly.] My amulet! My amulet!

[He speaks gravely.] Small comfort is counsel to broken lives; But tolerance is medicinal. In all our textures are loosed Pulses straining against strictness Because an easy issue lies therefrom. (Could they but slink past the hands holding whips To hunt them from the human pale Where is the accident to cover? Spite fears bias.) I am justified at my heart’s plea; He is justified also.

For the eyes of vanity are sleepless—are suspicious. Are mad with imaginings Of secret stabs in words, in looks, in gestures.

Man is a chimera’s eremite, That lures him from the good kindness of days Which only ask his willingness.

There is a crazed shadow from no golden body That poisons at the core What smiles may stray: It mixes with all God-ancestralled essences, And twists the brain and heart. This shadow sits in the texture of Saul’s being, Mauling your love and beauty with its lies: I hold a power like light to shrivel it— There, in your throat’s hollow—that green jade.

[He snatches at it as she lets it fall. He grows white and troubled, and walks to where AMAK is playing, and sees minutely strewn pieces of paper.]

[He mutters.] Lost—lost. The child has torn the scroll in it, And half is away. It cannot be spelt now.