Tonight, the sky creates
a darkened eyelid for
this brimming bowl of light.

Feeding bats fly low,
their wings like withered leaves
from Burton's travelogue.

The shrouded megalith
is stark as standing stones
in Daitokuji Temple.

Here, too, the gravel's
rips are disciplined and
raked towards a concentricity.

Makkah/Mecca, Hajj of 1410/1990



NOTE: Sir Richard Burton, Victorian linguist
and adventurer, travelled to Makkah in dis-
guise and later wrote Narrative of a Pilgri-
mage to El-Medinah and Meccah (1855-56).