SONG OF ISIS

 

I seek my love in a  land  as dry as the bones of prophets.

Scriptures burn  on a demon’s breath.

It is written

he will come as a serpent,

shedding skin like rope.

Twine it in your hair,

 but do not look back.

So sayeth the Lord.

Words fall like widows  from a pyre.

Ashes vault across the sand.

My mouth filled with sorrow’s stone.

Love compacted on the tongue

is a weight that cannot call him.

His silence, a chamber  of broken flight,

feathers falling

without mercy.

Revolution from the east

Footsteps from the south

Rumours from the north

Gunshot from the west

You are a constellation of broken promises

glittering in the ancient dark,

resurrecting the deaths of every moment

When will you come my warrior, adorned in grief,

your one eyed snake wet with conquest?

My longing for you

is  the aim  of an arrow

a miracle of coincidence at war with fate

crossing  this land.

My crown of stones

Shadows birth in the dying light, bearing  shrouds,

but  I am no buried  bride banished to dust.

My sorrow is a lust

rising like a hawk .

I shall  drown  you in the delta of my thighs.

Love will tear

The lotus from its roots.

In this land of scarab and scorpion, the carrion crow is king

Come! Beak of  divine oracles,

pluck out my eyes,

blind me to what is gone.

The whore of darkness whispers her trade:

lifts her skirts over the river,

straddles the sun

Snivelling tides salt our harvest, singe the barley.

We march on a map of famine, 

lost in  loss,

finding fools

slicing air with  cunning blades of fear,

until his body is a

scattered tribe.

Grief has worn me to a sparrow.  Even the moon  is a widow, her breath a broken mirror. He will not come .

His heart is

a robbed drum 

His voice a locked door. Silence is a messenger

kinder than the

gossip of death.

My arms hold each piece of you: thirteen  suckling babes.

Resurrection without memory is a wasted song,

your body  an empty casket,

your shrines  turned to sand.

I hear your voice whispering, flooding my dreams,

your divinity unshed,

your soul unsheathed

 I am Isis, she whose tongue is the waters of the Nile,

Whose mouth is a vessel for your thirst.