page 96

Inconstancy

The desert was burning, dear one,
And the sand
Stretching interminably out
To a hot sky,
Blistered my feet as they walked
Mechanically onwards. . .

Something that men call Fate
Had decreed
That I should walk thus—
Should take my body for one endless year
Across this burning loneliness.
And though I saw
The cool, dim greenness of oases,
Temptingly close,
I did not care
To turn aside to seek them—
For I knew
That somewhere
Across the blazing sand-dunes
I should find
Blue, endless depths of waterc—
Cool winds—
Green, drooping palm-leaves, crossed
Above long slopes of shadowed grass—
Unchanged since last I saw them. . .
Until then
Just sand—and heat-and sand, and heat intolerable. ...

Dear one,
A day came when I felt my feet
Walk over grass—
I felt my tortured cheek
Lean on the hard trunk of a palm-tree—
And I saw
With tired, sun-weary eyes
The edge of an oasis.. . .
Suddenly I sang,
And drank the wine
That some kind hand held out,
And flung my limbs
Into the little stream—
I swam there laughing,
Incredibly revived,
And splashed the shaded water into foam.

But soon
I found the banks were narrow,
I saw
Dust thick upon the palm-leaves,
And I felt the sun
Rising to mid-day turn the little stream
To tepidness. . .
And my brain
Was suddenly awake, and saw
The hopeless littleness of the place,
The transient ecstasy—
And hated it.

And so
I came away, dear one.
Out again under the sun
To face the desert s torture—and forget.

—E.T. (1933)