Desert Cycle Memory

Three Deserts, One Veil

‘Neath different suns a kinship spun,

Of dunes and veils, of light undone.

Three breathless deserts, bone and flame,

Bound by longing, not by name.

The two in the East, sightless, vast

Bear sockets hollowed by the past.

Blind titans carved by time and wind,

Their gaze withheld, their truths thinned.

But westward lies their silent eye,

So wide the moon forgets to fly.

Once called the Qalb al-Rijal

Now twisted tongues name it Richat's shell.

Forgotten is the pulse it knew,

Where men once knelt, and spirits flew.

Its watchers now are dust and guise,

Their lore corroded, heart disguised.

In Rubʿ al-Khālī, nothing rests

Yet Barhout’s well still draws its guests.

Jinn circle there in braided chant,

Where shadow speaks and forms enchant.

Kyzylkum, stoic, clenched in stone,

Wears ramparts like ancestral bone.

Its walls are oaths in mud and grain,

Its wooden spines bear drought and pain.

But lo—the Eye, in Sahara’s skin,

Reflects the secrets housed within.

It gazes eastward, star-aligned,

To feel its kin across sand’s mind.

Their bones are bleached, their tongues are stilled,

Yet wind repeats what clay has willed.

Mud, wood, and star—three desert keys,

Unlocking ancient harmonies.

Under veils of suns, they sing,

Of soul in earth, of deathless spring.

Each holds the other's dream half-spoken

Three names of truth, in one word broken.