The Lover - A Sea Voyage from Basrah

O Ayn Jalin, the dream of Said,
The jewel of Persia's mere;
Radiant star, supreme delight
Of all who venture near.

Where poets toy with metric turn,
Beneath the spreading fronds
Of luscious ferns, where rhapsodes learn
The lays of lost aeons.

Where fops parade their porph'ry plumes
Where preach the Patriarchist priests;
Beside imams and sundry loons
Peddling piety, war and peace.

Where mathematicians throng in thrall
To Qalanisi's library;
Striving, thriving, threshing all
Throught tomes of far antiquity.

There where swagger, coruscant
Proud heirs of wealth dynastic;
Inshal's great house, where sycophants
Prefer their scruples plastic.

Therein my goddess waits for me,
Her honeyed locks are seared with gold;
Her white arms bright like moonlit seas;
Her eyes burn brown, her firesoul

Browner, hue so rich in tone,
My raptured gaze could drown within
But for her fierce embrace, my own
Khadija, Thisbe...Joscelyn.

Enough! We land, and o'er the air,
I hear my mistress calling to me;
'Let fall your pen, come love me hear
For odes are better left to Rumi.'