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Endtimers
They are counting on doom like it is a letter
that has slipped beneath the stagnant piles
of sweepstake notifications and contest
results
in a warehouse down in McHenry, Alabama,
where the foreman drinks on Saturday nights
so his voice will be scratchy and true when
he bellows out his solo on "The Old
Rugged Cross"
between the reading of The Gospel According
to Saint John
by the acolyte who hasn't got hair one between
his legs
but still thinks he's had the calling so
in his squeaky tone
he tells them, "The woman then left
her waterpot, and
went her way into the city, and saith to
the men,
Come, see a man, which told me all things
that ever I did"
and the preacher's blustery and blistering
words
on the fire waiting to cut its tongues into
our flesh
and scourge each and every one of us sinners
to the bone
and heart of our worthless unforgiven souls
which will only know torment everlasting
in the burning pit we consign ourselves
to day after day
that our arrogance and pride blinds us to
the grace
and redemption waiting for our petition
like it was a zoning ordinance to be changed
or a blue law we could put our name on a
list for or against
and it never hurts to wait for the worst
day in the world
like it was a present arriving on the day
before the day
before Christmas with instructions to unwrap
right now
so it spills out all your fears and hidden
dreams
like they were wax candies filled with the
sweetest
and sourest syrups shaped like clownish
red lips
and too-green shamrocks and silver moons
glimmering
like a heavy trout lazing in the clear cool
eddies
washing back the water's insistence as the
brook
crawls downstream lapping past the branches
and stones that reach or sink like we touch
history's
passing since there is no pure river but
the one
beyond our grasp and waiting like a golden
bobbin
dancing on the spinning wheel that turns
their hours
into weeks into years fitting snugly across
the breath and sorrow they lift from their
quilt of existence
as if it were a thrown stitch straight-jacketing
them
into time's apostleship and the worship
of the end.
The Canals of Mars
Cradling their daughter like she balances
on a swing between them,
my brother and his wife calm and cajole
the four-year-old
as she screams out her frustration at the
Gordian knot dehydration
and peanut butter have tied inside her bowels,
locking off all
but the thin stream of disappointing urine
that wind and sand dismiss
the way rain might be rudely met if ever
it foolishly visited
the Western Libyan Desert.
Abandoned
land mines could spot
the shards of quartz sandstone and red dust
surrounding this slip of road,
misplaced or forgotten adult toys from one
pointless border war or the next,
but Danny, the microbiologist s five-year-old,
runs off the safe asphalt
and back, a silly game of dash and danger
that keeps his mother busy
between the boy's attempts to peek at my
niece's futile efforts.
No caravan of spices or slaves or gold,
we've traveled from Cairo
past Alexandria to Marsa Matrouh and now
on toward Siwa
in two four-wheel drives loaded with Baraka
water, Coca-Cola,
cheese and crackers, apples, Juicy Fruit,
cassettes of Billy Joel and
Rolling Stones and Mary-Chapin Carpenter,
bed netting, and Deet
to visit the site of the Oracle of Amun
where Alexander sought ascension
as Pharaoh before his Macedonian troops
but turned back after hearing
the priest's whispered words.
Who
needs Ozymandias where the unbroken plain
speaks for itself, the arrogance of empire
no more impressive here
than the carefully-lined path we saw some
twenty klicks back
leading to the road from a small stone house,
the only refuge from sun
and searing heat in the imaginable distance.
Someone thought the hundred-odd
heavy rocks marking this stretch of red
earth from that were important enough
to plan and gather, pattern and place to
mark this habitation as human,
to say, I'm here, despite it all, the desolation
this stretch of territory denies
simply with an ordered line of stones. No
wonder stargazers dreamed
canals for that other Red Planet, festooning
Mars with gondolas of gossamer
and stardust to sparkle against the arctic
song of space, the reality
of vacuum canceled by the possibility of
fancy, a mind playing out
its options in a universe of long odds.
We've
been stopping too often anyway
for my brother s liking, the microbiologist's
Bronco losing air
in first his left rear tire and now the
spare. While he makes his third change
of the afternoon, I roll the limp wheel
to my brother's Trooper,
past my sister-in-law, who has spread a
towel over the road s surface
for my niece to rest upon. She massages
her daughter's swollen belly,
and for an instant I think I hear her whisper,
Good girl, good girl.
The dust sifts down across this plain like
a veneer of permanence,
unsettled at a glance, but shifting and
upsetting like the boy's continued efforts
to find explosion under the mysterious and
seductive earth,
flinging stones out toward whatever he imagines
rests here.
The Spider's Surah
al-Hakim bi-amrillah ("he who
rules at the command of God")
b. August 14, 985 (375 A.H.), d.? February
13, 1021 (411 A.H.)
The parable of those who take guardians
besides Allah is as the
parable of the spider that makes for itself
a house; and most surely
the frailest of the houses is the spider's
house— did they but know.
—Holy
Qur'an, Chapter XXIX, verse 41
I.
At eleven, descending from the fig tree's
haven,
I received the head of a Berber general from
my
commander's hand, duty worthy of a young caliph
ascending to his rightful place. Now, four
years
have passed and still my power is not truly
mine—
Burjuwan, my tutor and governor, hoards the
jewel
of command and grants me only a glimpse of
its
splendor— but I have learned my lessons;
the student
waits patiently for the teacher's dismissal.
I will
tell my ministers, "Burjuwan was my slave
and I
employed him. He acted in good faith, and
I treated
him favorably. Then he misbehaved, so I killed
him."
That is all they need know. My mother s people,
the Christian patriarchs and their followers,
believe
we step into a new millennia tonight, that
their messiah
will rule this time with sword and flame and
truth.
But here in al-Qahira which was Fustat, city
of tents,
which was Babylon and Heliopolis and Memphis
before it all, here in my city of gates and
great walls,
of minarets rising above the dust-choked streets,
I will banish this new day, this new age;
I, successor
of Ali whom Mohammed opened all doors for,
shall
decree activity from now on becomes the night's
pursuits.
The tyranny of the sun rules no longer in
my land;
the day is remade into a time of dreams and
leisure,
while the night now shapes the body of our
commerce
and politic. The lamp and torch and candle
bend
and sell the available light for all who would
bid
and pay to see their will enacted out of shadow.
The river glowing with honey and the banished
raisins that ferment too easily in the desert
heat,
the Jew's tallow pots broken on the ashes
of cold
cooking flames, the heavy-crossed believers
weighted
with their iron icons to mettle their faith,
chessboards
broken and burning in the squares until ivory
pieces
soot indistinguishable from their ebony partners
all of these things I envision before me.
My tutor
calls me "the lizard," with a hollow
laugh, but I am
no scaled creature of the sun and heat. The
stars alone
know my destiny and I will ride to them to
find it.
II.
"If you won't stop, I'll bring
you Masoud."
—joking
threat from Egyptian folklore
In my stall of burnished copper,
the light of twenty candles flares
into fifty, one hundred, a thousand
if I polish every crevice, beat out
each face to mirror flame's heart.
The caliph stops by less often
if the light is strong and so I work
to keep the dust away, to harness
the shine my spit and hands create.
I watch the silk merchant across
the alley who draws too much
business for my liking, know he
may be only moments away from
a royal visit, a measuring of his
finest bolt of blue or maroon or
the white the caliph favors, and
if the cutting runs, or frays, is
too much or too little, then he
will meet Masoud. The caliph
will stand upon the merchant's
head reciting first the Surah of
Repentance or of the Bee or
the lesson of the Cave, parable
of the Ant, pronouncing, "Travel
in the earth, then see how was
the end of the guilty," while
Masoud sodomizes the man
there in his shop for all to see.
In this suk hoopoes and pigeons,
parrots and ravens flutter in
their cages, goats and geese
and fowl and camels mill about
waiting for a buyer, olives from
Siwa and dates and pomegranates
and melons and beans and rice
and grain and gourds and nuts
pile up and tumble out littering
the alleyways, the glass and pottery
and carved wood and precious
cloth decorate the stalls with
the finest crafts in the world, and
here we work metal with love
and skill and secrets passed
with care and silence. But now
we must not forget Masoud.
III.
Shaitan walks among us and he is named
al-Hakim, jailer and executioner of the women
of the city. For seven years we have been
his prisoners, our curfew twenty-four hours
a day, every day, our shackles the bare feet
he sentenced us to when he forbade all cobblers
the crafting or sale of women s boots. What
a thing a shoe is! The foot cradled against
stone
and stub, armored from manure and the stinking
runoff of the living city. It is not that
our toes
are delicate lotus blooms that must rest upon
their protective petals to float the vital
current,
it is not that our hands cannot scrub away
each
other' s grime and grit, smooth callouses
with
effort and caress, it is not that our perfumes
cannot rinse the air of foul odors rising
through
these mashrabiyyahs, our screens breathing
the city s nightstream of merchants calling
out
their wares, the beggars remonstrations for
their
just alms, the bustle we no longer may step
into
no physical obstacles hold us in check; no,
only
the cursed history of this demon slithering
through
the alleys, lurking like a beetle in the corners
of gloom, this butcher who locked young wives
and daughters, sisters and cousins, in a public
bath
when their merriment, their laughter and joy
in good company disturbed his baleful night.
He
did not reprimand or fine them or even imprison
them for their stain upon the fabric of restraint
he sews us tighter and tighter into until
we are no
more alive than the ancient dead whose brittle
shells
crumble in their stripped funeraries; no,
this judge's
turn was to transform himself from leader
to chef,
and he steamed the unfortunates to death,
their
screams more pleasing to his unnatural ears
than
laughter. Each day we hope he has gone too
far,
but there seems to be no horizon to the brutal
sky
of his reign. Our newest hope rests with his
sister, whose virtue he impugns at every chance;
perhaps the pride of the powerful is the only
sure
antidote for the poison of power. Quietly
and
in secret, I will mend my soles remnants and
wait.
IV.
The failed feltmaker, Hamza, declared himself
"Savior of Those Who Respond" and
intimated
that our mad caliph stood higher than man
ought
rightly stand, renaming al-Hakim "The
Maker
of Time." But true faithful to Allah,
the Beneficent,
the Merciful, corrected one of the clothman's
disciples with a blade of Truth and a lesson
of Death. His teacher will be counted among
the blessed at the fountains of eternal rewards.
Now the blasphemers dare ride their unclean
animals into Amr's mosque, delivering their
false pronouncements that the caliph is "Our
Sole
Lord, Giver of Life and Giver of Death."
"Allah
is Greatest and He has no partners,"
we respond
in unison, our chant strong and sure as khamsin
buffeting the city with the desert s reminder
that we are only here by the grace of Allah.
But when they mocked the bismillah, read from
an accursed page which begins, "In the
name
of al-Hakim billah, the merciful, the compassionate,"
we knew their deaths must be quick and obvious.
Let their lord bring down his wrath upon us
like
the hateful whip it is, let his hired troops
burn
our homes, loot our city, end our lives. Insha'
Allah.
V.
No longer line exists between my Self
and God, no longer breath can slip
between Earth and Sky, no longer seam
separates Life and glorious Death.
I became the Maker and Unmaker of
my city of dreams, crafting its nuance
of patterns like the finest inlaid jewelry
box which only opens to the secret
knowing touch upon the riddling panels.
I ride these nights upon my grey mount—
not a horse, though as Supreme Ruler
and Caliph I deserve the finest steed
my stables might provide— my transport
for this night journey is a simple ass,
a donkey I have named the moon for
he and I together are like the mysteries
of the craggy face above us, his soft
shadows the unknowing darkness and
my white brilliance the illumination
of the inscrutable heavens. The stars
map the future before me: my name
unutterable and then undeniable; my
mosque battered, abandoned, soiled
as a stable, a marketplace full of onions
and turnips, a playing field where
boys kick a sphere across the rocky
sahn, finally a jewel tended by those
who revisit the past and are dazzled
by web gossamering from my center,
my unaccountable ascension from
these Muqattam hills, these stone
sepulchers whose timeless dead rise
at my command, dance in this healthy
air unlike the rotted meat they have
become. I have built my memorial,
a city of the dead I leave as Misr,
I leave in misery and uncertainty
of my return here is my offering:
a donkey to feed the indignant
scavengers, a bloody coat, slashed
with dagger cuts by ungrateful
brothers, but like Yusuf I leave
no corpse to hang this death upon,
no irrefutable end to close the book. |
