No broken visor, emptied glove
abandoned cudgel, opened net
- only gathering spots on spreading sand.
Clang of cymbals
wrench of flesh,
death is a morsel
delectably met.
[15]
OCEAN SEA
All that is eternal is circular.
- Aristotle
Cueta and Tetuan are outposts within the Arab psyche,
frail islets jutting their Islamic consciousness
into the infidel mind.
A mere eight miles separates the tip of North Africa
from Iberia's reclining form.
An Arab dhow sits off the port of Tangier
where the unsuspecting can lose more than priapic curiosity.
Arabia, from Ormuz to Sofala,
an empire of sabulous plenitude -
shiekdoms, oil rich fiefs, and
luxurious enervation.
Da Gama rounds the Bight of Africa, needles the Saracen eye.
Tutankhamen rests dolefully within the dunes
away from bone merchants until 1923 draws nigh.
Ptolemy errs and extends Africa to the Poles.
The noblest failure in antiquity rests in Zama
while Jesus toiled for our betterment at Galilee.
Richard dies besieging Acre.
Carnage occurred at Lepanto with attendant demise of the Turk.
Marco Polo ignores the Levant for the riches of a Khan.
The memory of El Alamein burnt away any vestige of Tobruk.
The Casbah is my twain that confirms East & West shall never meet.
The False Prophet is in abundance, notwithstanding
Western civilization's fierce resistance to his ideas.
Minarets, prayer rugs face Mecca five times daily while
opium on a mother's breast induces premature death in
unwanted infant girls.
The purdah is an eerie monologue between the feminine
form and purloined courage.
Mysticism juxtaposes carnal delight in the halls of the
Saladein's concubines.
Harems & the seraglios are the coveted date wine.
In Cape Bojador, there lurks a primeval instinct,
a nagging supposition all is not right with Araby.
The bath, the cloying sweetness of duplicity,
stirs amidst trenchant eyes.
Marmelukes are more than adventure book fiction
in the silent quarters.
The swirling dust, the prohibition of alcoholic drink,
are dervishes in the hadji's brain.
Everywhere, the ragged people cluster,
almsgiving becomes a prayer in the saline night.
Any but the Moslem faith caught in the pilgrimmage
to Mecca meet swift death.
The shopfronts with their bronzed clatter,
decantered gold, near haggling that becomes
the economics of plea bargaining, wits
desire against pressing need.
Debarking from Algeciras, facing the sublime North African
desert as her colours coil, pitch forward amongst the hills,
squares this continent's personality against the Occident.
Europe found other continents soft butter to her trenchant blade.
Here, she must consider herself matched with the heady dictates of survival.
[16]
COLD PASSION
Some dead undid undid their bushy jaws,
and bags of blood let out their flies...
Dylan Thomas
The land is barren
wears straw wisps
as an unkempt man
might razor stubble.
The land is dry, a faded yellow
in its barrenness.
A sky broods from afar,
a stalactite sun accounts merely a jot
above that thin road into despair.
Grass lies everywhere dead,
faded tongues above an
earth afflicted with scleroderma,
deadliest of skin disturbances,
forerunner of deeper pestilence.
An erasing wind whips the fields
further into bereavement;
turns tiny bits of chaff to pursue themselves
in a mad St. Vitus dance
of cold passion.
Starry night. With halos
about the moon, pale and languid, big as crimson,
far as wind driven flax.
The orange pallor, pale
with liquid swoon and ability
to churn itself about the
night sky or flood in endless
beams our poorer spectacle below.
[19]