And these men that made the land

That wove their dreams with dust and dirt

That needed death to know the flower

Men of the corrugated country

Men of bones

Propped in the rusted windy ruins

Who watched the movements of the birds

Who bartered life with sky and earth

Men of the drought’s bare-cupboard cradle

Biblical in plague and famine

That struck the water in the stone

And fought with flesh to swell the soil

Time’s weathered toys

That sought a garden in the sand

Where withered streams of the dry season

Flowed with flooding summer rains

Men of the spectral desert spaces

That masked the ruined darkness with their drink

That fed the shadows with strange desires

And drowned the broken plough with tears