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telling her Arab friend, as war is waging,
“I wish you the best.”
She married late at fifty four,
in love with a historian
but soon slipped off her husband’s shoulders,
back on the road.
She wrote again – a final sojourn, to Afghanistan.
From her hundredth birthday, her bones
hungered for the dust from which they rose;
she breathed her last quietly, sating her thirst
on her beloved sand
at the graveyard in Asolo.
__________