el-Essbi's Journey Towards the EAST

By Robert James DeBurgh (Poet)

el-ESSBI set out unto the mystic East
With merchandise of BAS upon his beast
And he doth have an Hundred Guides
Conflicting in their views, and in a flapp!
For not one Guide, nor he, doth have a map

How like unto th�unknowing dead are they
That much-times wanders in the Land of Grey
And ending up, as horse behind the cart,
Almost exactly back nearly where they did make a start.

How like unto, as well, the Migratory Bedouin, of desert�s core
Migrates el-ESSBI about the place from floor to floor.
And so proceeds el-ESSBI towards the mystic EAST
Blundering about like a huge and legless drunken BEAST.

CHERAM-SIDI 1896

NOTE :
The actual location of Cheram-Sidi has not been found, but is thought to have been a village near Sidi-bou-Saiid in Tunisia, where DeBurgh was known to have the odd glass of Boukha.

NOTES ON PROVENANCE:
Donated by Hakim Bey to Sir Roger Cloudsley, Bart., on the dedication of the Kairouan Chapter of The Society. The BEAST referred to may be an allusion to 666. Or then again, may not....