Across the centuries
The march of their enduring flesh?
Did they hear--
Under the molten silence
Of the desert like a stopped wheel--
(And the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand...)
The infinite procession of those feet?

II

I room at Sodos'--in the little green room that was Bennie's--
With Sadie
And her old father and her mother,
Who is not so old and wears her own hair.

Old Sodos no longer makes saddles.
He has forgotten how.
He has forgotten most things--even Bennie who stays away
and sends wine on holidays--
And he does not like Sadie's mother
Who hides God's candles,
Nor Sadie
Whose young pagan breath puts out the light--
That should burn always,
Like Aaron's before the Lord.

Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain,
And night by night
I see the love-gesture of his arm
In its green-greasy coat-sleeve