Ode to Narouz*

*A poem inspired by Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet. A work remarkable if only for its masterly portrayal of the imagination's true desert heart and, in particular, of the Hosnani brothers in Mountolive.
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Whip in hand, Narouz speaks and bats
  lie split at his feet:

to a brother's glib oily bitch, a whip! and
  an old desert queen
   -true hearts-

Sand and eye's clutching vision, inter-
  twined, slink like Suras
   -in desert light!-

Linking palms of lovers also split,
  lying dead like bats
   - at his feet-