The doves cry of lust and sorrow in the oasis.
I will be gone tomorrow from the oasis.
Great palms comb the water with their fronds,
a gesture of grace to borrow from the oasis.
The desert is dry and wide and easy to die in.
The paths are short and narrow at the oasis.
How green my heart still is in my old age!
Are the paths all dust I follow from the oasis?
Long ago a young man killed a mourning-dove
with a slender palmwood arrow in the oasis.
Sometimes they called Oorsoo, Oorsoola,
the dove-voices, soft and hollow, in the oasis.