The Odyssey of Unnumbered Sands

No compass but the vulture’s arc, no map save blistered heels,
He sought the myth of distant springs where no mirage congeals.
The wind, a harpist plucking bones, sang hymns of ceaseless thirst,
And every breath was fire’s psalm, each heartbeat sand-immersed.

Three moons had waxed their pallid cheeks since last he glimpsed a bird;
Three more would wane before his soul could utter one faint word.
Yet on the fourth day’s ashen brink, as hope’s last ember died,
A shape emerged from molten air—a figure at his side.

No specter clad in tattered robes, nor demon’s hollow guise,
But one whose eyes held reservoirs where sorrow’s storms could rise.
“What phantom treads this lifeless stage?” the traveler rasped aloud,
His voice a rusted gate that swung where no ear was allowed.

“I am the echo you became,” the stranger’s words cascaded,
“The self you buried ‘neath the weight of burdens self-persuaded.
Walk with me through memory’s vault where yesterday’s dust swirls,
And I’ll show you the buried wellspring of the living world.”

Through canyons carved by tears unshed, past mesas of regret,
They traced the scars of ancient rains no cloud would now beget.
The stranger’s cloak, when moonlight struck, revealed a silver thread—
A seam that bound his form to dunes where all but death had fled.

“Behold,” he murmured, pointing where the horizon bled to naught,
“The garden where your childhood’s shade still lingers, though untaught.
There lies the well of might-have-beens, there sleeps the unkissed bride—
All loves you fled now coalesce in this, love’s suicide.”

The traveler knelt, his fingers splayed on Time’s unfeeling cheek,
And wept such salt as might have made the dead Nile rise and speak.
“Why show me visions wrapped in gauze when all I touch is sand?”
“Because,” the echo sighed, “you bear eternity in either hand.”

They walked till twin sets of footprints blurred to one enduring scar,
While constellations peeled away like petals from a star.
The stranger’s voice grew fainter as the truth began to dawn—
No guide, but his own withered heart he’d carried all along.

At last they reached a monolith where carvers long since dust
Had hewn this epitaph for those who in the desert trust:
“Here lies the sum of mortal years, the arithmetic of breath—
All fractions of infinity that taste the kiss of death.”

The stranger turned, his aspect now the traveler’s mirror face,
Two aged wineskins drained too young, two voids in one embrace.
“The well you seek is but the cup from which we both must drink—
The draught that proves all company to solitude’s cold brink.”

Then like the mist that clings to dawn before the sun’s decree,
The echo fused with golden air, leaving him doubly free—
Free from the chains of others’ eyes, free from hope’s cruel deceit,
Yet bound forever to the dance where no two shadows meet.

He built a pyre of his dreams, lit by Saturn’s ringèd spark,
And watched his past turn into smoke that left no ashen mark.
The vultures, wise in emptiness, refrained from vulgar feast—
There’s little meat on bones that host eternity’s lean yeast.

Now when the simoom wails its verse through canyons’ stony throats,
You’ll hear his laughter woven in—the sound a sandbank quotes.
And travelers who dare that waste (so legends vaguely tell)
Meet twin sets of footprints that merge where one man said farewell.

The desert, vast confessional where sins are blown to seeds,
Keeps his last lesson sacred: Every heart is all it needs—
Yet hungers for communion like the dunes crave monsoon’s trace,
While knowing, in its marrow-deep, that lonesomeness is grace.

Thus ends the tale not worth the breath to etch on water’s skin,
Of one who walked both far and in, yet never crossed where he’d been.
The sand, that great democracy, claims lover, king, and thief—
Their epitaphs the wind’s brief laugh, their legacy… is grief.