Cairo

OVER the faded yellow stucco
the hot sun streams:
dust strikes stinging and bitter,
swirling behind the clanging tram,
powdering the arabesque frets in the alley
where the black-swathed women crouch in the shaded doorway
between L'Épicerie d'Orient and a Coptic church.

Strident voices and smells competing
in unending dispute;
from the garbage-strewn roadway
and the dim crowded caverns of shops.
Radio screaming canned Arabian love-songs
in the café where fez nods eagerly to fez
over the greasy cards on the coffee-stained marble table.

Down the broad streets the soldiers
unconsciously arrogant
stroll with tolerant superiority,
or pass by laughing in the clop-clopping garry
while in Shepheard's their young officers
with pleasant stupid bronzed faces talk shop in the bar,
the world seen satisfied through shallow blue eyes.

26 February 1942