Before this desert, this death, of red rock, pronged cactuc,
And the night closing us into it, we essayed
The city. And after.
But bless history that brought us here
Where we sense on our skins the critical breath of God.
Still, it would be as easy as it is false to say aloud
That in this desert our skins are both black.
Then what is darker? Him or the cold sky that widens
Over and at the back of the mountains?
We will leave in the morning by the same roads
That probed ancestral desert, knowing what we have known
And no more, under God's witness, but free.