"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?
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/PCvj803
