There is a chunk of poetry/song towards the end of this novel. I remember it less for its words and more for its effect. More for the careful articulation of its presentation. There is a perfectly placed pause in the recitation/singing:

Gresham paused, watching the Tuaregs. Two rose and began dancing, their outstretched arms curling and waving, their sandaled feet stamping in time. It was slow, waltzlike dancing, elegant, elegaic. The singer rose to his feet again.

Gresham has been translating an Inadin song that has "a wailing meter and many verses" and one that illicits a keen response as the "other Inadin swayed in time, sometimes giving a sharp cry of approval. The crowd looked on open-mouthed." It's a history lesson.

[...]
We have always wandered among the tribes and clans,
We have always carried your messages.
[...]
Now we live in the cities and are turned into numbers and letters
Now we live in the camps and eat magic food from tubes.

History is glossed by a linguistic lesson. Gresham stops and explains that their word for magic is tisma which means "the secret craft of the blacksmiths". After this pause in the translation, before the reader is treated to the pause in the recitation/singing, the verses make clear that the rich green land is now rock and dust.

As the dance continues -- we are not told that it ends -- the singer chronicles the ruin of the grass through the epic passage of cows, sheep, goats, camels.

[...]
For a thousand years we loved our herds
For a thousand years we must praise the grass
[...]

Go to the novel and see how the song breaks off in a very unpoetic jang jingle. And watch the spin. Observe the strange pathways of reparation through corruption channels. And sing if you can. Dance if you will.