Egypt

The river and the desert,

The black and the red,

Life and death,

Breathing in and breathing out,

Man and woman,

Heaven and earth.

The scorpion is under his rock,

The cobra is in your head.

Dust in your eyes, dust of ruined cities,

Dust of stars and worlds, of dreams;

Night settles on your skin like a mosquito,

To suck the sweet juice of your veins.



Cairo: the men sit in the cafés,

Friends talking and sharing the sheesha,

Mint tea, and blood-red karkaday;

At Ramadan all are drawn into communion,

At sunset the lamps are lit on the minarets,

And beautiful calm and joy falls on the streets,

As everyone eats fuul and taamiya,

And celebrate with music and singing,

Purifying their lives day by day.

It is the time of the moulid:

Crowds gather at the saint’s tomb,

Singing, dancing, eating and praying,

While horses dance to music,

Acrobats and conjurers amaze the throng,

Sufi dervishes chant and sway for hours,

Attaining oneness with God,

And they lay down to let their beloved sheikh

Ride his horse over them,

Demonstrating their absolute obedience;

Hear the dulcimer, the lute, the flute, the viol,

Join in harmony, as the planets turn.

One hand holds sand, the other ashes,

Black horror rots your lungs away,

Florid salutations trumpet the air,

And everywhere:“Maalesh, maalesh.”



Anubis comes, vigilant protector of the dead,

With gilded ears and silver claws;

And Tutankhamen plays senet in the afterlife,

With ebony and ivory pieces;

He races across the desert in his chariot,

Hunting antelope and ostriches,

Trampling his enemies on the battlefield;

Serene Ankhesenamun offers her husband

Lotus, papyrus and mandrake.

Blind beggars lie with palms outstretched,

Barefoot urchins hump rubbish pails,

While elegant women browse the shoe shops,

And hotel guests lounge by the swimming pool.

Narrow streets thick with jostling crowds,

Slimy with donkey shit and burst water mains,

The smell of sheeshas and offal in alleys,

Cries of beggars, muezzins and hawkers,

Memories of old brothels and hashish dens.

In the Mosque of Saiyidna Hussein,

The head of Hussein watches over the centuries,

Remembering the moment of severance,

The fountain of blood from the wound;

Under the moon the Sufi brotherhoods

Parade with banners and drums,

Music fills the night with splendour,

Turning dusk into dawn into dusk.

The Mausoleum of Sultan Qalaoun:

Viridian, ultramarine and gold

The stained glass of the lofty dome,

And there by the tomb once hung

A stick used for curing fools and idiots

By beating them about the head;

Qalaoun the handsome Qipchak,

Purchased for a thousand dinars,

Rose to the throne through the ranks,

In the world of the Mamlukes,

Raised in barracks, adored and sodomized

By powerful amirs.



The khalif Al-Hakim moves among us,

Cursing Christinas, Jews, women and merchants,

Banning wine, chess and dancing girls,

Calling for all the city’s dogs to be killed

Because their barking disturbs him,

And, entering terrified merchants’ shops

On surprise inspections, happy when he discovers

A cheat to punish, standing upon his head

While his Nubian slave sodomizes the wretch;

His followers proclaim his divinity

In the Mosque of Amr, and the people revolt,

For which Al-Hakim orders the destruction

Of Fustat, watching from the hills

While the accursed city burnt below.hy

In the Cities of the Dead the living

Squat among and in the tombs,

Close to their ancestors, absorbing baraka

From the bones of saints and martyrs.



Here is the derelict Tomb of Shagar al-Durr,

The widow of Sultan Ayyub, who ruled

As sultana of Egypt for eighty days

Before the Abbasid khalif pronounced

“Woe unto nations ruled by women,”

Compelling her to marry the Mamluke Aybak

And govern from behind the mashrabiya;

Jealous of her power and warned by astrologers

That he would die at a woman’s hands,

Aybak planned to take another wife,

Whereupon she ordered his assassination

But after his death the Mamlukes rejected

Her offer to marry their new sultan Qutuz

And handed her over to Aybak’s former wife,

Whose servants beat her to death with bath clogs

And threw her body to the jackals.

In the Coptic quarter, the Christian liturgy

Is sung in the tones of the ancient Egyptians,

And the desert anchorites in their caves

Struggle with demons and temptresses,

And bathe by rolling naked in the sand;

Isis suckling Horus becomes the Madonna;

The ankh becomes the Cross of Christ.

At the Camel Market the emaciated beasts

Are beaten into ranks, shitting where they stand,

Hobbled and exhausted, while the traders

Inspect them with dispassionate expertise,

While herdsmen and merchants sit talking over tea,

While around them knackered animals

Are promptly throat-cut and disembowelled.



Beside the Nile a wedding party fills a casino,

With ululations, drums and tambourines,

And the belly dancer shakes and spins,

While street urchins peer through the gates,

Shouting blessings and ribald comments.

In the shanty tenements the sick and mad

Turn to magicians and exorcists for help,

Where celebrants whirl to ancient incantations,

Cymbals clash, and doves and rams are sacrificed,

Their blood daubed on the frenzied dancers.

Re travels in his solar barque across the sky

Over Heliopolis, over the primal mound

As the Flood recedes, and the black benben

Sings through eternity to the souls of Egypt,

While the Spring of the Sun waters the tree

Of the Virgin, the sycamore-fig whose branches

Sheltered the Holy Family in their exile,

And here Mary washed the swaddling clothes

Of the baby Jesus in the stone trough.



Under Sirius and Orion, the Pyramids of Giza

Call the astronomical soul to attention,

To seek for answers in this world of illusion,

To climb ever higher, and face the greatest fear.

The solar barques set out from the shore,

Heavenly cedarwood bright with the light

Of distant stars, as they sail through the sky,

Glinting in the pharaoh’s eye, the eye of Horus.

Exquisite, these titanic ashlars’ finish,

Wedded fast and true by flying djinns;

Weightless tonnage carved out of Time

Ascends in stages to the stars’ matrix.

The ghost of the open sarcophagus

Leads you through narrow passages,

Inward and upward, darker and deeper,

Promising wisdom and eternal life.

The scorpion hides you under a stone;

The viper maddens you with poison;

The spider catches you in secret webs;

The vulture comes to pick your bones.



Ride across the desert to Saqqara,

Companion of the gods, creature of stardust

And catastrophe, quickening with wisdom

At the dazzle of the soul’s pyramidion.

Now, before the spirit escapes once more

Through false doors, follow it to the source,

Through the heart’s chambers, into the light,

Weighed against a feather in heaven’s scales.

In the Serapeum I wander the galleries

Of titanic granite ahd basalt sarcophagi

Whxcih held once the mummfieid bodies

Of the Apis bulls,the soul of Ptah,

Who,with a word,brought the universe

Into being….



Hoopoes, turtledoves, bulbuls, bluethroats,

Redstarts, wheatears, egrets, hawks and falcons

Throng the river; the cobra and the vulture

Are joined, the lotus and the papyrus;

The White Crown and the Red Crown

Are made one; the Djed column arises;

The crook and the flail are crossed

Upon the pharaoh’s chest; the cosmos

Is gathered safe within his cartouche.

Allah’s fellaheen sail feluccas in the sky,

Mudbrick villages, painted blue for safety

Against the evil eye, sprout from blackness.

Tell el-Amarna is desolate desert plain,

Low mounds and litter of potsherds,

Nothing remains of Akhenaten’s royal city,

Dedicated to the new supreme god Aten,

When the old gods were toppled,

Where Akhenaten sang his hymns to the light,

And artists turned to nature and home,

And Akhenaten and Nefertiti ride in their chariot

Along the Royal Road, shining with glory.



At Abydos the pharaoh opens the shrine,

Offers the god sacrifices, washes and dresses

His statue, presenting it with gifts,

Then scatters sand on the floor, sweeps away

His footprints and withdraws with solemn reverence,

Leaving the god alone again until the morning.

Go west, into the desert hills, soul, beyond Abydos,

For there lies the entrance to the underworld;

The buried head of Osiris comes to life,

And calls to Isis, searching for his scattered limbs.

White and gold the pillars and pylons

Of the Temple of Isis on the isle of Philae

Shine against the blue water and black rock;

In the sunken rooms in the roof

After the long lamentation,

Isis gathers the limbs of Osiris,

And the slain god lies naked and tumescent

(the phallus vandalized by iconocloasts)

Upon his bier; mourned by Isis and Nephthys,

He revives to impregnate his sister-wife,

Then, transformed into hawk-headed Sokar,

He is borne away to a papyrus swamp

By the sons of Horus, to be anointed with holy water

With Anubis in attendance.



At Karnak, the priestesses masturbate the statue of Amun,

Hymning the glory of his ithyphallus,

Pylons, courts, columned halls, obelisks, and colossi

Recede into infinity, in shadow and sunlight.

In a Luxor nightclub until dawn, amid seedy décor,

The dancers come, one after another, on the stage,

Each more beautiful and beguiling than the last,

Tantalising and cajoling the rich businessmen

To throw money at them, and any dancer who fails

Toa rouse the raucous crowd, the manager shoos off

And immediately orders the next girl on,

As the customers call out, demanding blondes,

Or come to blows over their favourite dancers,

Getting drunk and smoking bango in a haze.

At Deir el-Bahri the Temple of Hatshepsut

Rises in terraces against the cliffs, monument

To a woman in pharaoh’s kilt and beard,

With her devoted lieutenant Senenmut at her side;

Once the terraces were cooled by fountains,

And planted with myrrh trees, the queen’s delight,

While in a cave to the north is a graffito

Of Senenmut buggering his queen Hatshepsut.



At Siwa Oasis, among thick palm groves,

Freshwater springs and salt lakes;

Think of the army of Cambyses that vanished

On the way here, sent to destroy the Oracle,

Caught in a sandstorm in the desert,

They separated, panicked and got lost,

And were buried forever beneath the restless sands;

Look, Alexander is coming across the desert,

To speak with the oracle, and be transformed;

At her ritual bath the young bride stands

And removes the disc from her silver collar,

Handing it to her younger sister, as she lays aside

Her maidenhood, offering herself to the future.

In the Eastern Desert, the hermit in animal skins

Emerges from his cave, with an escort of lions,

And a lone gazelle stands praying on a rock;

In the monastery, ostrich eggs hang from the ceiling,

Ready to hatch the resurrected Son of Man.