Lost Voice

I found, on the dry ground, a crumpled sheet of paper. Which I picked up. Curiosity overcame shame. There it was, a most brazen poem, a thing of beauty, unrestrained. So now it is here, a copy in my own hand but not by me. Who? I know it not! So don’t ask and just enjoy.

CRY OF THE BAZAAR, DRYHEAT Make way, make way for the loudest street alive — where indigo drips gold and walnut turns to hive, where silk unspools like gossip down the Arcade’s spine and every haggling voice pretends it isn’t mine!

Nine marks for madder! Ten more for the lie! The Weighing Hall winks and the scales testify. A Serevan sail brings citrus dressed in brine, copper struts in sunlight like it owns the whole design.

Karvel, indecent river, sluggish, brown, and slow, you carry every secret and you never let it show — but the Bazaar doesn’t care, the Bazaar only sings, in drams, in slivers, in the clatter cheap joy brings.

So drink the dust, dear stranger, and don’t ask what it costs — this city sells its splendor to whoever’s lost. Vairostai doesn’t whisper. Vairostai declaims. Come haggle with the harbor. Come learn its hundred names.

Author Unknown