There were fires screaming nightly from that chaos, there were vultures in that lightless desert deep. Twin flights of vagrant carrion, pecking lithe the bones of recent fallen, plucking skyward out the eyelids of the dead, rush west off and to the sea in ragged torment: boneplucked drying dead lay maggotchewed and fawning for a day once more in worlds among the living: these were shepherds and flock-herders, men of simple ways. Nobel, tilling hard the earth each season for the reaping up of all the lying dust: those naked seeds in frenzy sup the living waters deep and through their clustered gullets sheltered there along the fecund ground. The sun in rage climbs swiftly from his ladder tall and shrinks beneath the towering of mountains: all lays still and none are speaking. There is death here, for the finding and the taking. There is no life here for miles. There is only the lament of something old and just past sight:  the breathing of a windy gale. Let come the vultures for the bones. We are not sorry for the hurting ground.