The dunes do not forget what fell from the sun. Across the salt-white flats of the eastern reach, iron birds lay shattered on the gravel run, broken by fire the arid heavens teach. A sovereign far away consults the sand, promising calm when autumn’s ballots blow, while out along the burnt and coral strand the Red Sea whispers where the tank-ships go, as black sap thickens beneath a rising tide, measured in silver coin that none can keep. The watchers on the jagged ridges bide, while kings in northern frost are laid to sleep. Far off, where western prairies bake in light, the elders gather under pavilion domes, trading in curses to outlast the night, while borders shut against the northern homes— casks turned away, the wagons turned around, and ledgers weighed with salt and bitter grain. Across the stony scrub, decrees resound where olive groves are claimed by dust and pain, carved into parcels by an empire’s quill, as distant courts cast wards against the hand that clears the ancient terraces on the hill. The desert breathes a solitary grief: in green-ridged valleys far beyond the sun, a cinder-house has stolen morning’s leaf, where running footsteps ended one by one. Above the misty isles, the compass veers, the iron needles stall in silent air, while scribes of judgment yield to quiet fears and drop their scrolls upon the council stair. The sirocco counts the price of bread and stone, the climbing tally that the wind conveys— a restless world of ash and marrow-bone, sifting its fortunes through the desert haze.
