While close by in the silent streets
There march long files of purposed men
Who go to death, perhaps,
For the same cause he travesties
Within the playhouse walls.


BLUCH LANDOLF'S TALE

When I was old enough to walk
I rode a circus horse;
My first teeth held me swinging from a high trapeze.
About the age young men go out to colleges
I trudged the sanded vasts of Northern Africa,
Top-mounter in a nomad Arab tumbling troupe.
I was Christian, that is white and Infidel,
So old Abdullah took me in his tent
And stripping off my white man's clothes
Painted me with dye made from the chestnut hulls,
Laughing the while about the potency of juice
That would prove armour 'gainst some zealot's scimitar.
Four camels made our caravan
And these we also used for "props."
When we played a Morocco town
The chieftain met us at the hamlet's edge
Asked of Abdullah what his mission there,
Then let us enter
He leading our caravan to the chieftain's hut,
Where we sat upon the sand
The thirty odd of us