Poem: Silk Road

[W13]

There was some thingy related to the Silk Road so I wrote a poem for it:


Buy this painted porcelain and bolts of silk from the east,
Of quality much better than the pitiful Byzantine copy,
Carried through deserts and over the range by man and beast,
All for a few Justinian coins -- to pay my tariffs back to Shanxi.

And here’s some spice from a caravan from the Indus,
Pepper and turmeric! Or perhaps you prefer cardamom?
Ah, I see you have coins with the bust of Quintus,
Your silver, Roman! It will buy me good jade from Khotan.

A fire worshipper from Sogdia told me about a faraway land,
Beyond the ancient pyramids and their papyrus shallows,
Where gold is piled high at your feet upon command,
Shall I keep talking? Your silver drachms! I’ll take those!

Antioch was a sight for sore eyes, until this new tax,
He calls himself Theodosius the Great. What a disgrace!
I pray his empire crumbles and they break his back,
Then, I’ll have more dinars to gamble on the races in Damascus!

The road to riches, and the same road back home,
And when passing through Samarkand or Tashkent,
I’ll buy my waiting wife a beautiful bejeweled comb,
With the gold solidus that I haven’t already spent.