City Of Night Poem by Michael Walker

Where the River Nile kissed the sea,
The pharaohs slumber under golden stone;
The pyramids stand for posterity,
As suns set over souls who go alone.

Bewitched by tears from the Eye of Horus,
You smile like the lips of the Great Sphinx;
You are an enigma none too porous -
Are you a pious maiden, or a minx?

You write to me from the City of Night!
In hieroglyphics none can understand
On tablets hewn out of electric light,
Whence seas of blood on sand part for God's Hand.

Through the labyrinth of Osiris,
Death's Angel smites the land by night with blight;
Shoots bloom from the amaranth of Isis,
Yet here, the Holy Family takes flight.

O City of a thousand minarets!
O Cairo, on the banks of fertile Nile,
A spider weaves her spindled spinnerets,
Where milk and honey once made Moses smile.

As cenobites wait for eternity,
Mary, Star of the Sea, waits for me.