Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MAROUF, by DUDLEY POORE



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MAROUF, by                    
First Line: Was it marouf who found at the roots of the mountain
Last Line: Of children's voices.
Subject(s): Feasts; Forests; Woods


Was it Marouf who found at the roots of the mountain
a palace of glass
where he lay with a Peri
tasting ripe figs, spicy quinces, luscious melons,
while sleek-breasted nightingales
hatched in the gardens of the moon
warbled officious approbation?

That was a feast no doubt
to gladden the bowels of Nebuchadnezzar,
yet now I remember
I was never extravagantly fond of melons.

Not for me those imperishable gardens,
those uncrumbling palaces.
Something better there is here,
something in the green moss gently covering
the cupids in the weed-choked pool,
little by little defacing their pudgy nakedness,
something in the eating lichens rose and grey
whose spreading arabesques
gnaw little by little through the ochre walls,
something in the delicate marigolds
whose creeping roots slyly wrench from the gate
stones the brown hands of workmen toiled to raise
a thousand years ago,

something fugitive that troubles me with such beauty
that even the odour of agony dropping from the clouds,
the stench of anguish darkening the air,
the memory of iron fingers inexorably tearing
the milky pulp of the brain,
cannot tarnish the bronzed glimmer
of shadows on the apricot-flushed paths,
or the shimmer of wind silvering the olive branches,
or through the heavy sunlight of untroubled afternoon,
the distant shrilling, faint as crickets,
of children's voices.





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