It was the saddest horse, grey and weary, he could barely
hold me. I felt sorry, too, for the young man
who had taken the five dinar.
His mouth
was too full of teeth every which way,
even with some missing,
and his face was crooked and flattened and
hardened by the desert. He was
beautiful,
he had a wrangler-jeans kind
of swagger and
glittery obsidian eyes.
…
Some of the women wear
heavy kohl on their eyes and
a darling little girl
holds a baby goat.
One dinar, please, she says in perfect English
when I snap her picture.
On a towel, another little girl sells pebbles and scraps. Her father
is behind her, up a ways,
with a hammer,
chipping them out of
the desert wall.
…
On their last legs, the horses took us
the last leg of our journey,
delivering us from the stark city that had been
chiseled from rocks. We had walked for hours over
ancient bones and stood
in tombs and pagan temples,
under an ageless boiling sun.
For us tourists,
the weather was perfect, but
locals said it wouldn’t rain
for six more months, at least, and that soon
it would reach 105 degrees.
I couldn’t imagine this place, how it would be.
These blazing rose gold rocks,
the camels covered in colours,
and bells, an enchanted world,
and the Bedouin jewels, molten metal melted over open fires,
these blue and carmine gems,
metal trinkets stirred in the dark.
…
Inside the cool and secret shroud of the earth,
this cave, carved
millennia past to the Nabean goddesses,
then, a monastery, made by monks.
When I in awesome wonder
consider all
the worlds thy hands have made…
We have climbed
we are weary
but here, at the top, this temple.
we sing.
Then sings my soul
how great Thou art
how great Thou art…
Our voices are pure like bells inside these walls.
We are tired, and spellbound
solemn,
ragged with psalms.
• • •
• • •
• • •
