I'd sit in church, on rainy nights
with gargoyles gurgling at the door
And dream that I was setting sail
towards some warm, uncharted shore

I'd leave this land of unbaked clay
of plodding cow and dreaming spire
Where flowers are wan and fruits are sour
and where the heart is without fire

For realms where colours pierce the eye
where rainbow parakeets parade
And peacocks sweep the jungle floor
with starry plumes of bright brocade

Where silent tigers skulk around
in painted orange velveteen
And fix their prey through lacquered leaves
with eyes of flashing tourmaline

Here everything is huge, as if
beneath a magnifying glass
The flaming, angry flowers poke
and lick and stab you as you pass

And in this great Promethean kiln
where lifeless clay was given breath
The spiders spar, the mantis prays
and tigers tussle to the death

No place for salon-cloistered swans
who glide around all dewy-eyed
In some Imperial hookah-dream
and never see the world outside

While I...I long to see it all
the light, the squalor and the mire
the lotus rising from the mud
the dark, the splendour and the fire!