A poem by Alistar Crowley (1875-1947)
El Arabi! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own!
O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is
That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone
Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love’s assassin sorceries!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of a kiss?
El Arabi!
There by the palms, the desert’s edge, I drew thee to my heart and held
Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning back,
Smitten by Love’s forked flashing rod -as if the uprooted mandrake yelled!
As if I had seen God, and died! I thirst! I writhe upon the rack!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
It is not love! I am compelled
By some fierce fate, a vulture poised, heaven’s single ominous speck of black.
El Arabi!
There in the lonely bordj across the dreadful lines of sleeping men,
Swart sons of the Sahara, thou didst writhe slim, sinuous and swift,
Warning me with a viper’s hiss -and was not death upon us then,
No bastard of thy maiden kiss? God’s grace, the all-surpassing gift!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
Yea, death is man’s Elixir when
Life’s pale wine foams and splashes over his imagination’s rim!
El Arabi!
El Arabi! El Arabi! witch-amber and obsidian
Thine eyes are, to ensorcell me, and leonine thy male caress.
Will not God grant us Paradise to end the music Earth began?
We play with loaded dice! He cannot choose but raise right hand to bless.
El Arabi! El Arabi!
Great is the love of God and man
While I am trembling in thine arms, wild wanderer of the wilderness!
El Arabi!

A few random poems:
- After Hearing a Waltz poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Rainbow by Ria De Torres
- English Poetry. Mark Akenside. The Pleasures of Imagination. Марк Эйкенсайд.
- A Dainty Thing’s The Villanelle by William Ernest Henley
- Thoughts in a Garden poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- Ольга Высотская – Ежик
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 04 – part 03 by Torquato Tasso
- English Poetry. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Satan Broken Loose. Перси Биши Шелли. Тень Ада
- Robert Burns: Inscription For The Headstone Of Fergusson The Poet:
- Ecstasy by Sarojini Naidu
- Adieu…, adieu…. by Vladimir Marku
- M for Man, Money and Moon by Raj Arumugam
- Вера Павлова – Вопрос ребра
- Владимир Высоцкий – Очи чёрные: Часть I
- An Attempt At The Manner Of Waller by William Cowper
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- For What As Easy by W H Auden
- Five Songs – II by W H Auden
- Fish in the Unruffled Lakes by W H Auden
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- Eyes Look Into The Well by W H Auden
- Edward Lear by W H Auden
- Doggerel by a Senior Citizen by W H Auden
- Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly by W H Auden
- Two Songs for Hedli Anderson by W. H. Auden
- The Shield of Achilles by W. H. Auden
- The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
- The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden
- September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden
- On the Circuit by W. H. Auden
- In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden
- In Memory of Sigmund Freud by W. H. Auden
- If I could tell you by W. H. Auden
- For Friends Only by W. H. Auden
- Epitaph on a Tyrant by W. H. Auden
- Death’s Echo by W H Auden
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works