Thief and gambler, in the mind’s Algiers,

Bicker for a division, in a veil of shade.

Stillness explodes into a cloud of battlecocks.

Knife, with a bright tooth, bites the hiding heart.

Death caws, like copper, in the throat,

And the dry gambler’s dying like a daw.

The thief’s a flying shadow:

Slants up the wall with pockets full of coin,

And, in the wide sky, disappears.

But where the sun bullbellows in the mind’s Sahara,

His money shines on the waterless earth;

And in his sky of thoughts, his old desires

Fly back as black as carrion birds,

And gradual death begins to ring,

Like gongs, the sunstruck canyon’s quiet stones,

Until the nameless traveler learns in terror

His lidless eyes are open targets—

Where sudden night flings in her quiet spear.

He hears ring shut the clangorous gates of day,

And sees eternity hang open like a pit.

Meanwhile, the distant kites become companions,

Loving him for what was once his flesh.