Alexandria Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have seen you lying under the sky
Like the Great Victoria Desert of Australia,
Your body the milky smoothness of Oasis,
My eyes come to drink with the animals off
The streets, to cool on your body as it yawns
Up to the night—So I toss my head up and
Howl and laugh on you with the speckled
Hyenas, as mysterious goldfish swim like
The reincarnations of mute children
Through your reedy shoulders; As your hair
Ripples the auburn banners of its nature,
The aboriginal flag of the forebears of this
Mystical continent your body relaxes upon,
Estranged from other women you drifted away
To become the extraordinarily distant place,
The exhaustive study of man’s science;
As your thoughts coalesce in the stratosphere,
Each of your memories a winking constellation,
Eerily distant and indiscernible from all others,
Unreachable by our lips as by our fingers,
Though we sate our lonely thirst upon your body,
As our eyes drink in like throats your soul the
Length of the earth in dusty dress, you who rises
Before us like an Aleutian well in effluvial waters
Which spray and mist the night-lit desert,
As your eyes are sometimes seen relaxing in
Camouflage in the folded places you purposefully
Shadow, until the sun emerges like a bannered king
In the bright conquest of thoughtless empires;
Then you turn yourself away again, become the
Settling earth, the crisp red earth, the dry talking
Earth where we hunt upon with naked spears.
We feel you beneath us, guiding,
As we long to lay down beside you, to sustain
Our bodies on your streams and otherworldly portions
Which crouch and pant with us, as we become but
An aspect of your indescribable nature,
When you lay down your body, the Oasis in
The desert, sustaining and defining.