El Arabi! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own! <br />O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is <br />That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone <br />Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love's assassin sorceries! <br />El Arabi! El Arabi! <br />The moon is down; we are alone; <br />May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of a kiss? <br />El Arabi! <br /> <br />There by the palms, the desert's edge, I drew thee to my heart and held <br />Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning back, <br />Smitten by Love's forked flashing rod -as if the uprooted mandrake yelled! <br />As if I had seen God, and died! I thirst! I writhe upon the rack! <br />El Arabi! El Arabi! <br />It is not love! I am compelled <br />By some fierce fate, a vulture poised, heaven's single ominous speck of black. <br />El Arabi! <br /> <br />There in the lonely bordj across the dreadful lines of sleeping men, <br />Swart sons of the Sahara, thou didst writhe slim, sinuous and swift, <br />Warning me with a viper's hiss -and was not death upon us then, <br />No bastard of thy maiden kiss? God's grace, the all-surpassing gift! <br />El Arabi! El Arabi! <br />Yea, death is man's Elixir when <br />Life's pale wine foams and splashes over his imagination's rim! <br />El Arabi! <br /> <br />El Arabi! El Arabi! witch-amber and obsidian <br />Thine eyes are, to ensorcell me, and leonine thy male caress. <br />Will not God grant us Paradise to end the music Earth began? <br />We play with loaded dice! He cannot choose but raise right hand to bless. <br />El Arabi! El Arabi! <br />Great is the love of God and man <br />While I am trembling in thine arms, wild wanderer of the wilderness! <br />El Arabi!<br /><br />Aleister Crowley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-bordj-an-nus/
