The Camel
Don't tell a camel about need and
want.
Look at the big lips
pursed
in perpetual kiss,
the dangerous lashes
of a born coquette.
The camel is an animal
grateful for less.
It keeps to itself
the hidden spring choked with grass,
the sharpest thorn
on the sweetest stalk.
When a voice was heard crying in the
wilderness,
when God spoke
from the burning bush,
the camel was the only animal
to answer back.
Dune on stilts,
it leans into the long horizon,
bloodhounding
the secret caches of watermelon
brought forth like manna
from the sand.
It will bear no false gods
before it:
not the trader
who cinches its hump
with rope,
nor the tourist.
It has a clear sense of its place in
the world:
after water and watermelon,
heat and light,
silence and science,
it is the last great hope.
by Wislawa Szymborska
from Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak