The years have slowly stretched out
In the dry space of the heart
Dust has gathered
Dreams of joyful music
Of barefoot boys and maids stringing garlands of flowers
While children giggle
These images fade into the unreality of foolishness
And now my dancing girl lives far away
I only hold her electronically
I can see but not touch

In the secret place of the heart
There are only graves
Mausoleums of love
Fading pictures
Faces turned away
Silence and remorse

Now I step slowly
In dry rocks, broken by sun and wind
The light is flat, glaring
Tongue swollen
It is not the heat that lessens my hope
It is not the sullen hissing of broken stone
It is the horizon never changing
Unrelenting dry hills
Even the color of crumbling ochred rock
Is unchanging

What had been a vague fear
Is now visceral
There is only death here
An ending

Surely somewhere there is moisture
A brackish pool
A muddy well

I dream of water splashing
Sprays of kindly blue
A shy deer bending down
A hint of green in the vastness of empty brown
Maybe a small bird
Some sense of softness, tenderness
No

Even the light is fading now
Like Eliot, I wonder
Is there someone beside me, unseen
an unknown companion?
Only illusions I suppose

So blindly the journey continues
No direction, no real goal
But the stumbling walk itself is all.