The solitude is broken by voices,
domesticity thrown onto the street.
The sound is echoed from whitewashed walls,
a catacomb of rivers in the heart,
soaking the heat; the relentless pounding
of blue skies.
The slow lumbering pace of a desert
landscape, where alien faces appear
from behind blinds. Dark watery eyes sunk
into decaying skin; amid a motionless
day where only the flies in multitudes
of annoyances flick from sticky place
to sticky place.
A newspaper stirs abandoned by a
stranger in a hat. Empty coke bottles
reveal the thirst that kept a country awake.
Now lost dreams are caught in the siesta
in this foreign culture that crawls, takes shape
and explodes into the haunting voices
of the night.
Without you it is all poisoned, cut short,
the voices sound frightening even threatening;
the solitude mocking. Without you the
church bell sounds like a gun fight, molesting
the dusty floor, echoing from the eyes
of the strangers, their indifference open
to suggestion.
The night walkers appear from the refuge
of old movies, from behind shuttered
windows and dark places. They emerge
and take comfort from the coolness of night.
Another sleepless village content on
the edge of reason, waiting while the world
passes by.
I am a stranger at their café bar
scribbling on a piece of paper, while
my subjects watch me in bewilderment.
In solitude among people I sit
unknowing, unknown. Without you I’m another
shadow unable to take refuge from the days
relentless heat.
And here above all is my subject,
sat alone scribbling your image onto
this landscape. And the refuge I sought
among these mountains, among these people
of tamed horses, bull fights and running blood,
was never enough to quench the relentless
pounding of my heart.
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