"Caravanserai" is a poem about feminine power, motherhood, and spirituality.

The poem describes a "woman dream seller" who "divines on sand" and her encounter with the "young camel driver / dream buyer" who tells her that "there was Egypt / in her hair." The persona of the dream seller is associated with symbols of supernatural power: the moon, basins of blood, childbirth, the tides. Her "dream selling" is an expression of the interconnectedness of the body, birth, the movement of the tides and moon, and the spirit.

Her association with Egypt suggests the ancient or timeless nature of this power. The action of the poem is both specific and universal; the dream seller might be an actual woman or a symbolic representation of the female. The final stanza, which repeats the image of "brass basins of blood," adds the image of the woman bending "to deliver"—possibly to give birth—"by a tributary of the Euphrates river." This suggests that the "blood" and "water" are symbolic of the woman's elemental role as the giver of life.