Some years ago I wrote an account of the sanguinary career of Tamerlane for the Time-Life History of the World. After my editor, Charles Boyle, had read the first draft, he went home and dreamed a strange dream in which 'Old Hoppity' turned up at Time-Life's London offices. The dream, in time, metamorphosed into a poem, which he included in his collection The Very Man (1993). It begins:

A man with a limp came towards me
begging for money for liquor - spoke of cairns
built of skulls, of the wind off the steppes
on the night before battle
and the evils of cholesterol.

In what follows the poet wonders (as well he might) why the long-dead warrior has invaded his life. The poem ends with Tamerlane admonishing the poet:

He said 'You think a life
Has a beginning, middle and end?'
Then he emptied his pockets
And showed me the eyes of Hafiz.

LRB 19 May 2005 | PDF Download