A speaker sits alone at night beside the Dead Sea and watches the moon come up. The opening image is odd and a little unsettling: the moon is "like a bloated stomach," heavy and swollen, glowing through salty mist. Bats fly overhead, and the poem says they are singing, which turns something that might feel eerie into something almost musical.
Then the focus narrows to a dry white bone lying nearby. It shines in the moonlight and is compared to a wood flute, so an object of death becomes an instrument, something that could make sound. The speaker doesn't seem bothered by any of this. Crouched on his haunches, he is described as "at peace," and the final line widens out again to the "star-eyed desert," as though the stars are watching him back.
The mood is calm, strange and quietly accepting. The short, spare lines mimic the silence of the place, and the poem suggests that beauty and decay can sit side by side without any conflict.