"The Other Ocean," by Paul Zweig

It was the whip-marks of the horned asp,
And the Beduin sucking his coffee
Through cracked fleshy lips;
It was his ceremonial kindness
In the month-long solitude of camel-watching,
While his animals bellowed over the plain
Like ghosts roaming in the star-glitter.
It was these scattered lives in a country without rain,
And the miniature within,
Crawling, hissing,
Its light almost solid, almost mineral.

The way back smelled of cinders,
Older, emptier than anything living;
A way of faces lost in the changes
Of light into dark, passing grief-wrinkled
Boulders, sand glaring red and grey.

It was a line of rust scrawled on the stillness,
As a sown darkness, and an expectation.