Classic Poem

Yet I have means to fly from grief, when such pursues me, on a lean
high beast, which paces swiftly by day and by night,
A camel sure of foot, firm and thin as the planks of a bier, whom I
guide surely over the trodden ways, ways etched in earth as texture is in cloth;
A she-camel, rival of the best, swift as an ostrich. When she trots her
hind feet fall in the marks of her forefeet on the beaten road.

With her white feathery tail she lashes backward and forward. Some-
times the lash falls on her rider, sometimes on her own dried udder, where no milk is, flaccid as an old bottle of leather.
Firm and polished are her haunches as two worm jambs of a castle
gate.
The bones of her spine are supple and well-attached, and her neck
rises solidly.
When she raises her long neck it is like the rudder of a boat going
up the Tigris.
She carries her strong thighs well apart, as a carrier of water holds
apart his buckets.
Red is the hair under her chin. Strong she is of back, long of stride;
easily she moves her forelegs.

The marks of the girths on her sides are as the marks of water-courses
over smooth rock.
Sometimes the marks unite and sometimes are distinct, like the gores
in fine linen, well-cut and stitched.
Her long skull is like an anvil, and where the bones unite their edges
are sharp as the teeth of a file.
Her cheek is smooth as paper of Syria, and her upper lip like leather
of Yemen, exactly and smoothly cut.
The two polished mirrors of her eyes gleam in the caverns of their
sockets as water gleams in rocky pools.
Her ears are sharp to hear the low voices of the night, and not inat-
tentive to the loud call,
Pricked ears, that show her breeding, like those of a lone wild bull
in the groves of Haumel.
Her upper lip is divided and her nose pierced. When she stretches
them along the ground her pace increases.
I touch her with my whip and she quickens her step, even though it
be the time when the mirage shimmers on the burning sands.
She walks with graceful gait, as the dancing girl walks, showing her
master the skirts of her trailing garment.