The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

AT BORDJ-AN-NUS Ex Arai! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own! O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love’s assassin sorceries! El Arabi! El Arabi! The moon is down; we are alone; May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of a kiss? EI Arabi! There by the palms, the desert’s edge, I drew thee to my heart and held Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning back, Smitten by Love’s forked flashing rod—as if the uprooted mandrake yelled! As if I had seen God, and died! I thirst! I writhe upon the rack! El Arabi! El Arabi! It is not love! I am compelled By some fierce fate, a vulture poised, heaven’s single ominous speck of black. E] Arabi! 37