Ramses of Egypt Entreats His Coy Lover: Long Version
I sensed your presence before I ever
saw you standing: fine aroma, chestnut
eyes, the modest tread of your feet coming
across the parquet floor through labyrinths
mosaic of lapis lazuli tiles;
Ah, long ago… long ago… so much changed!
Where is the king before whom a thousand
nations bent the sweaty and dusted knee?
My body dead so long that I cannot
tell the difference between this limestone
and divine wind of ibis taking wing!
Nor the mute sphinx and all my vibrant dreams!
O, God is great!... filled with Mercy… and Love:
When I first took your pearled heart in my hand
to breach the kernel of the nut of fire
that lay within that ruby pyramid;
to melt the ice from your pure, snowy breasts!
to plunder the delta of Avaris!
love no longer subdued to the haughty
shepherd kings of your remote horizon brow…
my back cut by long nails… our wounds, not deep… a few…
exhausted we lay… scorpions and asps…
breathing hard… memorious pains of love… !
Were you not the firmament of the sky?
And did you, O, star!, not condemn me to
endless pilgrimage through the Sinai’s wastes?
Exiled from love, where does one find to run?
Love is not a trifle that grows and ebbs
like the Father Nile before and after Sirius
has run his speedy course through the posterns
of the city in the sky of darkest night:
Love desires a mansion for it’s soul’s rest!
The eternity in mankind is love,
and love itself for all of mankind
shamelessly does lust and like a river
overflows and it cannot be constrained,
and once love has passed us by, it will then
be lost at sea, or evaporated
in the desert, or sink through pervious
stone to the unseen world of aquifers;
then shall our mortal eyes shine like weeping
scarabs no longer affine to the sun…
all our days obtuse angles of winter..
I wait a thousand, thousand years for Spring!
In obscurity of sand and stone where
everything seems dull pain and slow passage-
creeping metronome of nature’s cruelty!
Yet, we shall be reborn, my love, my love!
And we shall sweep away the wasteland sand
and hidden fountains will cleanse the portals
and I shall bring again golden bracelets
to clothe you once again within their bands:
silks and hair, silver tongue, agates and eyes!
--
notes
Avaris
the capital of the Hyksos on the eastern part of the Nile delta
Shepherd Kings
ancient translation of the name Hyksos
memorious
the pains are filled with memory, not that they are memorable
Sirius
the star by whose movement the annual Nile flood was reckoned
