Nefertiti

You will find no body, no remains:
She disappeared into the desert’s glow.
Such gentleness and melancholy touch her face,
Perfect and remote, this beauty commands trepidation and awe,
Severe in its symmetry and ritual.
From her hands she bestows love poems and sensual sculpture,
The dead in immaculate white linen robes set sail
On the river, and in the palace naked acrobats and dancers
Entertain the feasting nobles, as they toast one another
With endless cups of wine, and nibble at fine foods.
Birds sing in the palace garden:
Intoxicated with the blue lotus,
The female musician ,though copulating with a guest at the dinner party,
Refuses even then to put down her lute,
Still playing her bewitching music.
The queen’s eye hunts the wild lion through the air;
Her tongue catches glittering fish in its nets.
Smooth is her slender body all over, radiant-skinned,
Perfumed, and graceful, sinuous in her movements,
Her beauty rouses the gods, and gives them pleasure;
In the temple she receives the god into herself,
Shaking the sistrum ,irradiated by the sun,
Her body glowing through her diaphanous robe,
She opens her arms to the light, the uraeus ignites and sings,
As she chants adoration among the echoing columns,
And the sun holds the ankh to her lips.
She rides the sphingine palanquin of centuries,
Takes the reins of the chariot, galloping across the desert;
Her hand lifts the mace to execute the kneeling foe;
Her name is written in the horizon’s cartouche.
She is the burden of vineyards bowing to heaven,
Beehives oozing honey; ships’ bellies stuffed with grain and gold;
Precious stones from distant lands.
Sunlight blesses the benben stone.
See here the bust of a young and puissant queen,
Her face austere and serene, full of strength and equanimity,
Measuring justice with unfailing instinct;
And here the crone, with sagging dugs and gut,
Frowning in sorrow and resignation at her fate,
Alone, her sere womb exhausted of harvest.