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.