In Rechemstei I met a seer,
tall and broad like all of her kind
who, wrapping shawl about her neck,
and bristling mandibles against
that sunset chill began to speak
on matters of old tales: “There,”
said she, “Over the sandy brush,
a strange and elder construct lies
for which the purpose of its form
was but a silk-span in the wind,
lost to the sands. Two rods of iron,
long and chapped with awful age, run
into the sands, a path of rust
and salted earth. A scar, unhealed.”
At that she stopped, and growing grim
that stranger spoke of fairer songs.
But as my passage took me on
off from that town, I found my steps
hastened toward that place of myth.
The rusting rails were there as said,
below my pads the stinging salt
from where a binding had been done.
The rails an unsewn iron thread
against the aching of the sky.