The Wind Blows Eastward

I lie upon a changeless, yellow sea

Above me, is a fountain of hate

My lips, a parched well through which life runs free

For the wine of your love, the wait

My body is caked with despair's breath

A raiment suited to my plight

I wait amid sifting pores of death

Dear hope has not taken flight

I look to the tyrant, lord of endless thirst;

I am neither wanderer, nor sacrifice, nor feast

I am a mirage, not born of your heat

I shall shimmer away from your grasp

Though your malice dances underfoot

And even in the shade

Alive I shall be

Scorch me if you will

But hearken my tale

For in it lies the secret

To my tempered will...

In her eyes there is no oasis

But there is depth, there is mystery

And a shimmering image of me

She is not the fairest in the land

But she is of the earth

She has slept upon the sand

Her skin is not ivory, under the stars

But her embrace is a promise, unbreakable, warm

Her bosom is the desert's dream of wars

And of storm clouds taken form

'I will wait', she said

As the horizon swallowed me

The wind carried her whisper

Toward the blue seas

Her whisper binds my spirit

It is the call of the oud

Upon the velvet night

It tugs at the strands of my heart

And my solitude roars unraveled

Ten years I have walked

Served fortune like a slave

Now a shipwreck, then a war

Here an innocent life to save

But now I am done

I will wander no more

My longing sways in the twilight dust

The sand slumbers beneath

The wind now blows eastward

It wraps my face with rough, cool hands

My talon-brown eyes look towards

My home, a forgotten, dream-born land

And with the will of a galloping horde

Of black horses with star-sharp eyes

Those beat on the satin womb of the sands

The rhythm of a moon-white riq

I rise from the golden dust, a mystic

Of love that has too long been denied

Of oases that lost souls forever seek

Of music that is a thousand deserts wide

I walk to the hill that grows gently in the wind

I leave behind pain and wounds of memory

And they tumble as tiny avalanches, golden tears

Trickling towards a deepening valley in an endless sea

And dawn comes and kisses my unbelieving eyes

Guilty of having forgotten its caress, they cringe

And there in the far distance, at the fingertip of the skies

Is a solitary palm, blackened by a red disk, ascending

The wind blows eastward

I fall to my knees, my being takes wing

In the distance, the palm rises; a crooked shard,

A seif that pierces the emptiness within