Jaafer The Barmecide

Scene, Baghdad: time of the Khalif Haroun er Reshid. Salih ben Tarif speaks.

With Imam Hassan I had reached the khan Outside of Ambar. Jaafer at the door Of his pavilion watched a caravan Inbound from Yemen.--Ah, the bales it bore Of richest stuffs and spices!--'Mid the rout Of porters, camel-drivers, old and poor, A singer stood,--a blindman, singing out With luted preludes. Imam Hassan then: "'Tis Zekkar; he, t' whom, with the blind about The Mosque of Moons, I with our holy men Scattered my silver at the hour of prayer, When hearts are open unto Allah's ken.-- Danic or dirhem, though, were wasted there: Yea, by the Prophet! had one sown dinars He had not budged one finger or that stare. And so the beggars and the scavengers Got all." Then I: "The very same whom I-- Guard at the Western Portal--'neath the stars Some midnights past heard singing. Dim the dry Hot night; and Baghdad only knew of us Until, gray shadows shuffling slowly by, Pilgrims for Mecca passed, all vaporous In dust and darkness; them we challenged not. --Slaves, with the tribute of Nicephorus The Roman, from long shallops, as they shot Along the moonlit Tigris far away, Timing their oars, raised languid chanting.-- What This blindman sang was sweeter than--let's say-- The songs of Ibrahim, the dulcet frets Of Zulzul's lute. I listened till the day Made gold of all the city's minarets, And the muezzin summoned us to pray."

Now while we gossiped, lounging slow along The packed bazaar, a fisher with his nets Passed, singing Abou Newas' newest song: A honey-merchant, then, his tinkling mule All hanap-hung with sweetness: then a throng Of scholars and their Sheikh from mosque or school: A milk-white woman on a cream-white ass, Black slaves attending.... And--I am no fool!-- I knew her of the Court, the noblest class, By her gem-bangled bracelets.... Let Haroun On the Euphrates with Zubeideh pass A single day, at royal Rekkeh,--noon And night his harem here, so it is said, Is all intrigue.--Then drawling out his tune, "Ten thousand pieces to be paid, be paid, For Yehya's head, Er Reshid's late vizier," A crier passed us. Then the market's shade Glittered with weapons; and we seemed to hear, Sword of the Khalif, Mesrour, and commands Naming the Khalif. One swart officer Flamed forth the Sultan's signet. And harsh hands Were laid on--whom?--I saw not! For my sight Was dazzled by the scimitars,--from bands Of jeweled belts that burned,--and, keen and bright, Swift hedged us out. Then broad the red blood dyed The ground around a body--and, hoar white, Was raised a severed head.--And, stupefied, Elbowing the rabble, "By my beard!" I cried, Marking the face, "Jaafer the Barmecide!"

A PRE-EXISTENCE.

An intimation of some previous life? Or dark dream--by my waking soul divined-- Of some uncertain sleep? in which the sin Of some past life, a life that some one lived-- Not I, yet I,--long, long ago in Spain, I live again.... Wherein again I see From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,-- Damascened corselet broken, his camail And armet shattered,--deep within the eve's Anger of brass, that burned around his helm, A hurrying flame,--a galloping glitter,--one Ride arrow-wounded. And the city catch Wild tumult from his coming, wilder fear-- A cry before him and a wail behind, Of walls beleaguered; ravin; conquered kings: Triumphant Taric; shackled Spain--revenge.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's, Housed near the Tagus--squalid and alone, Save for his slave,--a dog he beat and starved,-- Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon, A battle beacon, westerns; all my bones A visible hunger; famished with the fear, Soul-garb of slaves, I bore him--I, who held Him, heart and soul, more hated than his God, Stood silent. Fools had laughed. I saw my way.

War-times grow weapons, and the blade I found Was hacked but pointed.--Well I knew his ways: The nightly nuptials of his jars of gems And bags of doublas.--Well I knew his ways. No figure, woven in the hangings, where He hugged his riches in that secret room, Was half so still as I, who gauntly stole Behind him, humped and stooping; and his heart Clove to the center, stabbing from behind, Thrice thro' his tattered tunic, murrey-dyed. Forward he fell, his old face 'mid his gold, Grayer and thinner than the moon of morn, While slow the blood dripped, oozing through the cloth, Black, and thick-clotting round the oblong wounds. Great pearls of Oman, whiter than the moon; Rubies of Badakhshân, whose bezels wept Slim tears of poppy-purpled flame; and rich, Rose, ember-pregnant carbuncles, wherein Fevered a captive crimson, blurred with light The table's raven cloth. Dim bugles wan Of cat-eyed hyacinths; moon-emeralds With starry greenness stabbed; in limpid stains Of liquid lilac, Persian amethysts; Fire-opals, savage and mesmeric with Voluptuous flame, long, sweet and sensuous as Deep eyes of Orient women; sapphires beamed With talismanic violet, from tombs, Deev-guarded, of primordial Solimans, Scattered the velvet: and like gledes amid,-- Splintering the light from rainbow-arrowed orbs,-- Length-agonized with fire, diamonds of Golconda.... (One a dervish once had borne Seven days, beneath a red Arabian sun, Seven nights, beneath a round Arabian moon, Under his tongue; an Emeer's ransom, held Of some wild tribe.--Bleached in the perishing waste, A Bedouin Arab found sand-strangled bones, A skeleton, vulture-torn, fierce in whose skull One eyeball blazed--the diamond. At Aleppo Bartered ... a bauble for his desert love.) Jacinth and Indian pearl, gem heaped on gem, Flashed, rutilating in the taper's light,-- Unearthly splinters of a rainbowed flame,-- A blaze of irised fire; and his face, Long-haired, white-sunk among them. And I took All! yea! all! all!--jewel and gold and gem!-- Although his curse burned in them! 'though, me-seemed, Each burning jewel glared a separate curse.

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Can dead men work us evil from the grave? Can crime infest us so that fear will slay?... Richer than all Castile and yet--not dare Drink but from cups of Roman murra,--spar Bowl-sprayed with fibrile gold,--spar sensitive To poison! I, no fool! and yet--a fool To fear a dead Jew's malice!... Yet, how else? Feasting within the music of my halls, While perfumed beauty danced in sinuous robes, Diaphanous, more tenuous than those famed Of loomed Amorgos or of silken Kos, Draining the unflawed murrhine, Xeres-brimmed, Had I reeled poisoned, dying wolf'sbane-slain!