The Desert Wind

Desert Wind Messenger of the wasting sand, Fiend and sculptor and artist, Companion, builder, destroyer, Of the melancholy desert land ! Lorn caves and dim, cryptic caverns, Hollowed by thy ceaseless toil, Are homes of the weird, wild phantoms, That sweep o'er the desert soil. Bridges — colossal, majestic, Carved by perennial blast, Spanning the queer-cut canyons, Age-stained, precipitous, vast; Joining a wilderness of pain To one of illusioned respite, For the crossing of perishing nomads, Lured on by mirages of sight; Rude statues and shapes fantastic, In that lifeless museum grand, Were fashioned, shaped and sculptured By thy wild erratic hand. The temples, gracing that empire Of sun-scorched, shifting soil, Sublime in their designless art, Are products of thy whirling toil. Here play the lights and the shadows; "Weird phantom and vanishing sprite Flit frantically, silently, in and out Then hasten to haunts of the night. Thy burden, the grains of the desert, Gathered on thy weariless way, With glory illumines the sunrise, And makes splendid the close of the day. Lowry Nelson.