"Of Humps and Patience: A Camel’s Ode"
I. The Brethren of Burden
Two kings of thirst, two shapes of sand—
One curves its spine to Araby’s demand,
The other bears twin peaks like mountains low,
Where Bactrian winds through Gobi’s snow.
II. The Dromedary’s Design
O ship of dunes! Your frame confesses
A map of all the wildernesses:
Eyes shuttered dark with lashes’ lace,
Nostril-slits that seal your face,
Lips that read the wind’s dry tongue,
Feet that float where scorch has clung.
Your hide—the very hue of dust—
Mocks the sun’s deceiving lust.
III. The Bactrian’s Mantle
But you, shaggy lord of frost and stone,
Whose matted fleece outshines the down,
Whose clumped spring-shedding, gathered fine,
Weaves shawls to cloak a queen’s divan—
What need have you of jeweled robes,
When merchants trade your hair for gold?
IV. The Caravan’s Cadence
Left, then right, a rocking gait,
A thousand humps in slow parade.
Bone like ivory, dense and white,
Carves a path through day and night.
Swift dromedary, pacing steed,
Lopes where vultures take no heed—
While burdened kin, morose and lean,
Grind their teeth on spite between.
V. The Blood’s Strange Song
Not bird, nor beast, nor scaled thing,
Yet oval cells your currents swing—
No nucleus to mark their birth,
Like reptile spawned of salted earth.
Your fever dances with the sky,
No fixed degree, but wild and sly.
What thermostat controls your veins?
Only the desert’s harsh refrains.
VI. The Bite of Centuries
Beware the crunch of jaw’s despair—
Millennia of whip and glare
Have forged your fury, stiff as hide,
Till even kin you maim and ride.
Yet who could blame your tempered rage,
O slave of man’s ungrateful age?
VII. Epilogue: The Unbroken Road
No temple rose without your back,
No spice-road thrived where you turned back.
Still now you bear what planes decline—
Milk, meat, and hair; all yours, all mine.
Clumsy saint of patient pain,
The straightest thing about you’s name.
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