Day 277

"We shall not lie on our backs at the Red Castle and watch the vultures wheeling over the valley where they killed the grandson of Genghiz. 
We will not read Babur's memoirs in his garden at Istalif and see the blind man smelling his way around the rose bushes. Or sit in the Peace of Islam with the beggars of Gazar Gagh. 
We will not stand on the Buddha's head at Bamiyan, upright in his niche like a whale in a dry-dock. 
We will not sleep in the nomad tent, or scale the Minaret of Jam. 
And we shall lose the tastes - the hot, coarse, bitter bread; the green tea flavoured with cardamoms; the grapes we cooled in the snow-melt; and the nuts and dried mulberries we munched for altitude sickness. Nor shall we get back the smell of the beanfields, the sweet, resinous smell of deodar wood burning, or the whiff of a snow leopard at 14,000 feet."

Dirt road
is where thirst is, where hunger is,  where dreams are, sliding along the river
in the clear water
and your fears are, the dust covering their shoes and lugs
step after step  one and one and one and one and once again

Road is where your truth is, where you shall find your home
and always return
without all comfortable hideaways
and where all memories are

because naked in the desert you'll have every single thing that
sketched your path
and made you rich


and you'll carry within for -your- ever