The only outsider permitted to visit
the quicksands of Umm as-Samin
and cross not once, but twice, alone,
Arabia's Empty Quarter, Sir Roger,
renowned explorer, solitary devotee
of deserts, discovered nobility
in privation and exactly where
the fabulous Awash River went, 
then lunching lightly in Morocco
with a friend, quarreled about
whose turn it was to pay the bill
and never spoke to him again.

Remember the gray evening mist
just beginning to thicken
and the woman in the unbuttoned trench coat
and the beret tilting like a black halo
at the back of her head
as she sat at the marble-topped table
reading Le Monde
and the smoke from her cigarette
kept spiraling from her empty espresso glass
into the wind that tugged
at the awning of that Odeon cafe,
and remember how her nyloned legs,
crossed at the ankles, were resting
on a chair you were sure
she had just, in her usual way, 
casually kicked free of the table,
and remember how she was alone
on that tiny terrasse,
but did not look alone,
and you knew she must be waiting
for someone you also knew
would never again be you.