A Song of Songs in Egypt

In my sleep I gave my legs to the desert
Eyes closed I gave my fingers to the wadis
At first light I gave myself up to the dry winds and shifting sands

In this moment before I awake your body is the Nile to mine
to my thirsting wastes

In the quiet of this morning I find myself given
silent and still
My corpse stretched there beside the Nile
Lain on desert sands

I am transported in this quiet morning
Soon I am given to dust and sand
In the silence and stillness I am there
I feel my hands stretch and then they are lost

My fingers melt into the cliffs
Stretching, merging
entombed in rock
and my body dry, stone
hot
embraced by the cool swift Nile

your body so cool and clear
against my desert body
as I merge forever into the sands
it is contentment I feel
not loss
the aegis of these cliffs
as I irrevocably disappear
and breath too
just echoes now along the wadi walls

Stretched alongside your body the Nile
this my body of stone
fingers, legs, toes, waist encased in rock
dug and excavated
home to jackal and serpent
home to hidden tombs

to be silent
and to be still
through the ages
to be eroded by wind and rain
and to never leave a trace

this is where I was found in the morning
in my bed my ancient body
had become rock and sand
lapped by Nile

I think I have been in a writer's blank since completing my doctorate two years ago now.  Incredible that so much time has past.  I have spent the time writing the work up in two books.  One just published, Earthing the Cosmic Queen which is on relevance theory and the Song of Songs.  And, soon my doctoral work will be in press under the title Jouissance which really was as close as I could get to summing the poetry up in one word.

The question facing me now is what next?  There is so much more to do in that space between biblical literature and critical theory, and in the space between critical theory and poetic knowledge.  I am drawn to two things:  the way life and death are encountered in the biblical text -- and in this the life-death discourses of Cixous and Derrida still hold so much possibility, and the way madness interrupts the biblical text, or perhaps in fact produces it.

I am resisting leaving the Song of Songs.  I think that burning poetry has marked me forever.  Its hard to leave it.  And, perhaps I won't leave it, and won't leave Hélène Cixous when there seems to be so much more air there.

Malick's, To the wonder ... a Song of Songs?

Malick's latest contribution to film, "To the Wonder", has been said to be inspired by the Song of Songs.  Having spent the last several years immersed in the poetic of the Song of Songs, I would have to agree.  It breathes the same air.  I heard only the slightest reference in the screen play to the text per se, but the sense of it, the imagery, the emotion especially, the despair, longing, yearning, failures, rawness, heights, passions, darkness, flame, (and its quenching), and existential elements such as life and death, this was all so very much framed by the Song.  Particular cross overs that signalled to me a very rich reading of the Song of Songs was the privileging of the created world ... sunsets, fields, birds in flight, horses, buffaloes on the plains seemed to be as important as the human players.  The hero's failures to communicate, his absences, his lack, his coldness, his aspect which seemed trapped inside is not alien to the Song of Songs where the lover is both present and absent, in parts of the text, fails in his suit in others.  In this way I felt the Song of Songs and Malick's To the wonder, tells the truth and not the fantasy often presented.  The film, To the wonder, is cool and silent, where the Song bursts with heat and colour, and yet even in this perceived conflict I believe Malick and believed his reading.  The film was a wonder and I don't regret a moment of it.

"no one can turn film into a vehicle for illumination as Terrence Malick does"  -Pico Iyer
http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/terrence-malicks-song-of-songs/

Malala Yousafzai - a product of education | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Malala Yousafzai - a product of education | UK news | guardian.co.uk:

'via Blog this'

Education - liberal education empowers choice.  How can a young woman choose well when it is what she doesn't know or understand?  It's the same with theological education.  Reduction and limitation of knowledge, clipping of possibilities, leads consequently to reduction, limitation and clipping of choice.

Helene Cixous and utopian thought: From 'Tancredi Continues' to The Book of Promethea

Helene Cixous and utopian thought: From 'Tancredi Continues' to The Book of Promethea

Ragland, The Psychical Nature of Trauma: Freud's Dora, The Young Homosexual Woman, and the Fort! Da! Paradigm

Ragland, The Psychical Nature of Trauma: Freud's Dora, The Young Homosexual Woman, and the Fort! Da! Paradigm:

'via Blog this'

this bed

this bed
is smooth, cold stone,
i rolled away to the edge and my fingers slowly turned
like a tree slowly fossilized under layers of soil
floating, rippling cotton is allusion only
this is the artisan's work
carved edges, smooth, curved, embossed
this bed
will endure, marble base
does it look like life?
this cold marble
i recline
forever
rolled to the far side
draped by stone, finely chiseled
smooth angle of the spine, shaped
etched, the emotion, expression on my face
etched forever
impossibly still
could i even turn to see him
across
on the far side
stone image of a man
there he is hand clasped to head
sinews of his shoulders pronounced
frozen
every muscle carved with glorious precision
impenetrable
the tension of the scene
an everlasting memorial
this bed, carved out of stone
bearing the figure of a woman
and a man on the opposite side