The salt earth is bleached
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtONob9V-PXuTjeAzvZZmtb71pfZAxuFOOewgHmw1LtJLl9hb-TSZsbCDyoTns7I5vjuib00rJbnkECTqa_hvi1Uupwy5kxcv3FFnFq1QoIMyRqlsMjSihoyUQ14on1XF9F70qkjgaXqEH/s200/mohenjo+image+buffalo.gif)
and brittle as old bone, in winter
on the plain of ghosts.
Shrill and thin down the grey
millennia, the spirit voices
cry on the parched wind.
Language of a dead land--
the wind's riddles:
insistent and insinuating
whisper of pale grasses,
tongueless as corpses the slow
suck and hiss
of the river's mouths
and age-deep in the dust
of empty water-courses
the cryptic dialect
of broken stones.
But on the terraces below the citadel
a flute plays
and ghosts rise in their shining bones
bedecked with jade and lapis lazuli.
Above the luminous pools white birds drift
long-stemmed as water lilies
and terrible in their stripes
behind the broken walls the tigers walk
among the glamorous trees.
(Epigraph to Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: a Novel of Mohenjo-daro)
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