And hoary olives ’twixt far mountains blue,
And many a green-necked bird sung to his mate
Within the slim-leaved thorny pomegranate
That flung its unstrung rubies on the grass.”
“But a desert stretched and stricken left and right, left and right,
Where the piled mirages thicken under white-hot light—
A skull beneath a sandhill and a viper coiled inside—
And a red wind out of Libya roaring ‘Run and hide.’”
SIWA