The world's deserts akin. People dark amid clamor.

The echoes from cliffs scarred with time. Water seldom

squandered. We take in and expend. It's all about paper

dollars, bills painted green, as if we could buy back earth.

After the Rockies, hardness, the land is flat mile upon mile;

coyotes kill, men drill. In Marfa there are strange alien lights.

Oil wells pump West Texas dry. Sandstorms like an omen.

Tigua casinos now closed. The Aqueducts well owned.

The screen door bangs, The hawk an animal totem.

Men and women dark, tattered, the way men in Chevy trucks

drive on. The river deceptively shallow. Who would think

men drown often in desert? Bodies pulled on the banks,

newspapers trite with white men cursing the sun. Instead

of shame you will get double portion, God said. Callused

hands on the Mississippi, factories in Michigan moved

to Mexico, it came again and again like cardboard shanties

like rotting wood, stucco, adobe - It's how the poor walk

in sandals up Mt. Cristo Rey, beside what's left of a mine:

Lead and copper, suffering's exhaltation. Come closer.

Bloody knees on the altar's steps as candles gleam

and in golden robes priests in El Paso whisper.