In shade, tan, silken cows hide in the thorned acacias. A butterfly staggers. Stamping their hooves from thirst, small horses drowse or whinny for water. On parched, ochre headlands, daggers of agave bristle in primordial defense, like a cornered monster backed up against the sea. A mongoose charges dry grass and fades through a fence faster than an afterthought.
Dust rises easily.
Haze of the Harmattan, Sahara dust, memory's haze from the dried well of Africa, the headland's desert or riders in swirling burnooses, mixed with the greys of hills veiled in Impressionist light. The incredible blue with its bird-inviting cloud, in which there are crumbling towers, banners and domes, and the sliding Carthage of sunsets, the marble shroud drawn over associations that are Greece's and Rome's and rarely of Africa. With this blue I bless emptiness where these hills are barren of tributes and the repetitions of power, our sky's naive ceiling without domes and spires, an earth whose roots like the thorned acacia's deepen my belief.