Arabia Deserta (Riyadh to Al-Kharj Road) Minor jihads of horns to left and right, We stop-start-stop through noon-dimmed traffic lights; Start, at long last reach the smooth-laned outskirts, City dwindling behind, its umpteen streets Framed hazily within a single glance. Pylonned and gouged and diggered, the distance Fans out into man-made No Man’s Land. Offsetting the swelling gamut of sand, Cement factory flanks cement factory; Our mirror clocks up a quick inventory Of steelrods, breeze-blocks, fittings, girders, tiles – Next year’s palaces, proto-shopping-malls, Suburbs in embryo, contracts by the mile. Here’s another stretch of half-built wall, There a superannuated camel, Fur turned murky as, hard by, the hubcaps, Fenders, windscreens of imported pick-ups Flash and glimmer, that tireless stiltjack The sun rummages among car-wrecks stacked Into a metallic ridge. Purplish smoke- trail the only djinni, crushed cans of Coke This desert of a desert’s flowers, Too much we see in Nature that is ours. FUNPARK 2OOO with all its towers Stands a callow ruin, time as though reversed; Run up against infinitudes of blue, Its big wheel idles, no place to go to, Fortune’s figment, relic of the new. Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Blues for Giacomo