"I'll march beneath your banner while fortune it do smile,
And we'll comfort one another on the banks of the Nile." - Traditional
Always drifting north
My very name an anagram of Nile.
Up on deck I watch
That storied world sail by
Linked to Ancient Egypt
By filigree threads thinner than spider silk.
Baladi cows stumble through meadows
Eager to drink at the riverside
As a lone fisherman
In a cream galabiya
Casts his net where his forebears stood.
Exactly.
Before stars appeared
In the cool of early evening.
Verdurous palms and papyrus stands skirt the shore
Where brown children splash in Abyssinian waves,
Now that the crocodiles have gone -
Only their stuffed corpses at Kom Ombo
Sprawled behind glass gathering dust.
And beyond this green gullet of life
Lies a forbidden land
Of shortbread coloured crags
And scorched sand
Where scorpions hide and there is no water.
Just a biblical wilderness
Fit only for wandering prophets with delusions
And griffon vultures on thermals.
It was there in those fabled tunnels west of Luxor
In the lee of a pyramidal hill that
I thought I saw my life
Chiselled out in hieroglyphs
Flowing north like The Nile itself
But I could only surmise the meaning
For I had no code...
Nile…Line…Lien…Neil.
My very name an anagram of Nile.
Up on deck I watch
That storied world sail by
Linked to Ancient Egypt
By filigree threads thinner than spider silk.
Baladi cows stumble through meadows
Eager to drink at the riverside
As a lone fisherman
In a cream galabiya
Casts his net where his forebears stood.
Exactly.
Before stars appeared
In the cool of early evening.
Verdurous palms and papyrus stands skirt the shore
Where brown children splash in Abyssinian waves,
Now that the crocodiles have gone -
Only their stuffed corpses at Kom Ombo
Sprawled behind glass gathering dust.
And beyond this green gullet of life
Lies a forbidden land
Of shortbread coloured crags
And scorched sand
Where scorpions hide and there is no water.
Just a biblical wilderness
Fit only for wandering prophets with delusions
And griffon vultures on thermals.
It was there in those fabled tunnels west of Luxor
In the lee of a pyramidal hill that
I thought I saw my life
Chiselled out in hieroglyphs
Flowing north like The Nile itself
But I could only surmise the meaning
For I had no code...
Nile…Line…Lien…Neil.
Where is the measure?
Who truly knows?
Who truly knows?
"Verdurous" is a good word. I saw those stuffed crocodiles at Kom Ombo, and some live ones in a village down near Aswan. They were babies, in a concrete pen, and I very badly wanted to liberate them. But I wouldn't have had to live with the consequences.
ReplyDeleteProbably borrowed from Ode to a Nightingale.
DeleteI swear there were no crocodiles in "Ode to a Nightingale".
DeleteYou are right! I asked Google AI. Answer:
DeleteNo, there are no crocodiles in John Keats’s poem Ode to a Nightingale. The fauna mentioned in the poem includes a beetle, a death-moth, a downy owl, and flies.
But it helpfully added:
You might be thinking of his entirely separate, much shorter sonnet, To the Nile, where he famously asks the river, "Where are your daughters?" and references "sedgy banks" and the "green rushes" where the "maky (crocodile) reposes".
[No "verdurous", but he lacked your advantages of having (a) been there and (b) read the Ode to a Nightingale.]
And it goes on:
If you are interested, I can:Analyze the flora and fauna in Keats's other odes...
[Etc]
We are all doomed.
* Griffon vultures on thermals ... *
ReplyDeleteHave the crocodiles really gone ?
Paul McClean, the young Financial Times journalist, was pulled into a lagoon
in Sri Lanka by a crocodile. An appalling death !
African women are often seized by crocodiles while doing their laundry in lakes.
I wouldn't like to see my life chiselled out in hieroglyphs.
It may explain why I never travelled farther than Italie.
Egypt. You took me there. Molte Grazie !
Yes Jack, north of The Aswan Dam there are no crocodiles in the wild and only a few in the Sudanese section.
DeleteMy oldest son would love to travel to Egypt. He's waiting for the Middle East to settle down...
ReplyDeleteRight now he would be perfectly fine Ellen though that thought did cross our minds. On board an organized river cruise he would have little to worry about.
Delete"Abyssinian wave" > Mexican wave > See ya later, Alligator > In a while, crocodile!
ReplyDelete(My own word association football contribution in honour of the World Cup.)
Lay off the sherry Marcellous! You know what your doctor told you.
DeleteI never made the connection between your name and the river's before.
ReplyDeleteA thought-provoking poem, full of atmosphere.
Thank you Meike. I just could not ignore the name co-incidence.
Delete