A juniper-tree on a rocky hillside;
A dark signal from afar off, where the weary may rest in the shade;
A monastery for the flocks of little birds which by night hurry across the Desert and hide in the heat of the day;
A basaltic-cliff, embroidered with lichens and illuminated by the sun, orange and yellow,
The work of a great painter, careless in the splash of his brush.
In its shadow lie timid antelope, which flit through the sage-brush and are gone;
But easily they become fearless unto love.
The sea of sage-brush, breaking against the purple hills far away.
And the white alkali-flats which shimmer in the mirage as beautiful blue lakes, constantly retreating.
The mirage paints upon the sky, rivers with cool, willowy banks;
You can almost hear the lapping of the water,
But they flee mockingly, leaving the thirsty to perish.
I lie down upon the warm sand of the Desert and it seems to me Life has its mirages, also.
I sift the sand through my fingers.
Behold the signs of the Desert:
The stagnant water-hole, trampled with hoofs;
About it shine the white bones of those who came too late.
The whirling dust-pillar, waltz of Wind and Earth,
The dust carried up to the sky in the hot, furious arms of the wind, as I also am lifted up.
The glistening black wall of obsidian, where the wild tribes came to fashion their arrows, knives, spearheads.
The ground is strewn with the fragments, just as they dropped them, the strokes of the maker undimmed through the desperate years.
But the hunters have gone forever.
4
