ROBERT LEADER
On my overland trips through the Middle East to India I spent many nights sleeping out under the stars. Looking up at the Milky Way spread out across the heavens was always conducive to deep philosophical thought and poetry.
DESERT NIGHTS
Silent sands, soft-bathed in moonlight,
Still beneath pale-gleaming stars.
Each one a distant, jewelled world,
Galaxies of light unfurled,
Life across the heavens hurled, `
Mysteries from afar.
Dark boundless space of sparkling spheres,
The heavens blinking bright with tears,
Life's sorrow weeping from afar.
What is Life?
Why is Life?
The answer is in the stars.
Eternal movement, growth and thrust,
Man‘s earth a speck of floating dust,
A pin-prick witnessed from afar.
What is Man?
Why is Man?
The answer is in the stars.
Eternity does but a moment last,
The future has no difference from the past,
And God is smiling somewhere from afar.
What is God?
Where is God?
The answer is in the stars.
God and Man, and Truth and Life,
All facets of one diamond's light,
Reflected mysteries from afar,
Answers written in the stars,
Ever calling from the stars,
So distant in the night.
Oh, desert sands of frozen time,
So ghostly neath bright-haunting stars,
Blown clean of history’s vanished pages,
And the scattered dust of vanished sages,
Through millenniums of vanished ages,
The answers are in the stars.
