Ode to Narouz

*A poem inspired by Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet. A work remarkable if only for its masterly portrayal of the imagination's true desert heart and, in particular, of the Hosnani brothers in Mountolive. __________________________ Whip in hand, Narouz speaks and bats lie split at his feet For a brother's glib oily bitch, a whip! & an old desert queen’s true heart Sand and eye's clutching vision, inter- twined, slink like Suras in desert heat! Linking palms of lovers also split, dead like bats lying at his feet

(2013)