The desert is not an empty place;
there are more trudging this barren sand
than I can understand,
seeking a remembered voice, a face;

And they are not ghosts,
each made real by their pain,
brought here by the disdain
of the one they cherished most;

But I have no time to see them, or to speak,
and it seems they would not listen—
who would share a heart that pines, an eye that glistens?—
this place and their faces are too bleak;

Pulled by the past through this empty now,
each alone, we march together,
braving sun and wind—no other weather—
knowing not why, nor where, nor how;

We seek the deserters, those whose motion
left us to wander this heartless blight;
naught could deter them in their fickle flight
nor us in our brazen devotion;

Nothing in those lush green hills
could warn them of resultant woe,
and now we're out, and for all we know
the garden may be growing still;

Where they, who left, remain behind
while we who never chose to leave
have nothing left now but to grieve,
to sift the sand through the hourglasses of our minds;

Half-remembered by us all-forgotten,
that life beckons in myriad mirages—
here black rose wreaths, there corsages—
how to recall the robust without the rotten?

There is nothing here to slake this thirst,
our parched lips know no kiss;
we've trekked to agony from bliss,
having seen their best and felt their worst;

Only desert and deserted and harsh winds of memory
blow through what once was an oasis,
but now a lifeless sterile space is,
for as far as I can see, for as far as I can see.