FLIGHT UP THE PERSIAN GULF
The mountains beside the sea are golden-barren In the bright sunshine as Midas, and the sea Luminous turquoise green with milky edges, And tiny boats bird-seed specks along the shore, And very occasional villages geometrical Against towered Nature, groined, irregular.
Now the Oman peninsula, golden crocodiles Splayed out into the sea, and all their miles Their hundreds of miles of mountains unaware Of mankind's pentagon as this bright air.
And suddenly ahead, high as a cloud, The mouths of Tigris and Euphrates spreading Their vivid, million-channelled man-made flats, Green and triangular, with straight-edged orchards Of lined space-even trees and match-box houses Along the straight canals: here man began To impose his conscious pattern, and to mix Unaccidental colours. . The flying carpet Has settled, a level delta, on the water As vulnerable as our world in all this sea.
R. N. CURREY.
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