Fezzan Oasis
I smell a flower,
a mallow stem bleeding, perhaps,
then the queen's lace,
and finally lavander and rose,
and I step into Cairo's perfume shop
of eros and imagination
to think of her.
I see the geese,
a group of males in the wetlands,
then wonder where
the females spend intimacies,
so I go into the woods along
the river of woven reed baskets
and remember her.
I feel the virgin palm tree
bend beneath my over-eager grasp,
then wonder why
I am so angry, so perplexed...
so I go mad within the oasis
to drink naked from the spring
of her lips.
I see a mirage of flags
fly from imaginary forts within
the ancient lake:
suddenly my hair whips, running gazelle,
spit flying and panting mouth...
not pennants of war;
her wet dress...drying!
...I arrive at last,
out of breath and dirty as an eland -
where have you been?
she asks, eyeing my drooping fidelity;
Up and down, I gasp, up and down
Afric's paleo-lakes and streams!
they are no more!
she laughs -
like sparks from the Minotaur's flinty hooves -
takes me down a notch! -
phantom symposium of thirsty eyes!
How could the eternal lakes be gone?
And sacrament streams? Or extinct
my hart and hind?
naked gazelle -
go to the window, look about, and tell
me whatever you see!
Forgetting luxuriant nudity,
I strode - a dusty palm tree, a verdant
papyrus - I was numb catastrophe!
I saw the lakes... and then sat down, bare skin
on alabaster.
Her rain was love;
we replenished entire aquifers!
from my dust came clay
mixed with eros' several peculiar sweats;
Will one tumble th'Atlantean towers?
Or intercept and bind our Mother Nile?
No, she said.
------------------
notes:
Minotaur
the offspring of Minos' Queen Pasiphae and a Bull. Anyway...Minotaur is half human, half bull, lived in the Labyrinth, and Theseus killed him/it.
Daedalus designed the Labyrinth, if you're interested; his son Icarus was the first to die in a flying accident.
Afric's paleo-lakes...
anciently the Sahara was a verdant area, having dried up recently in geological time, destined to be green again in 15,000 years. "paleo" is a Greek prefix for "old".
phantom symposium
she says I have seen illusions, caused by thirst...phantom drinking parties ( in this case, drinking water) caused by thirsty eyes.
Some say that within the paleo-system of lakes and rivers, from the Chott el Jerid in Tunisia - in the North- down to the mega-lake of Chad...and even beyond, when the drainage of the Mighty Congo went eastwards, to the Rift Lakes of Victoria and Tanganyika...there was situated the city of Atlantis...and its destruction came with the Great Drying and plate tectonics within the Rift Valley.
The lady of this poem and I live in the magic time to come - or the time past, when the Sahara is green, and mankind is at peace. We interrelate with the present, and she cannot believe the drought that has overtaken her land in the past, which is our present.
