In the last light we made camp.
I slept with the dogs’ whimpering
and dreamed of the continent, a fierce mask.
From doorways the people offered their indifference
or crept through the bush to watch us. One came,
bent and crow-faced from years listening
to the desert. I recall he was dumb
and told off the words on the palm of the woman
who spoke for him. No more of that place than we,
his way lay south as ours west by the mountain.
I knew roads to the places he spoke of.
By the fire a stranger, in the dream
I knew him far back. His was old news
of burnings and wanderings, of the people
who spread through these lands.
I half-slept, the men with us listening
for some wonder. When she described the sea
our people opened their mouths, though I had once
seen it myself, grey and endless, like our way.
I was kept silent, it was nothing.
In that woman’s voice I fell into deep sleep,
all the ages of Europe elaborated,
a mathematics of blood. At the last
he walked between land and sea, a man
centuries old stepping the waterline stones
with an easy care, his eye never to one side
but to the edge of water and haze, and stepping so
a child came whom he seized and ate,
throwing aside what was half-eaten
as he came to the distance, without pause.