In Cairo There Were No Signs To Tell You Which Way To Go Poem by Howard Lieberman

In Cairo There Were No Signs To Tell You Which Way To Go

Streets, like people, like motor cars, run out of gas.
Here, more than likely, the signs will tell,
will pass-on a modicum of information,
may even say, “this is a dead end”, “there is no outlet”,
“private driveway”, or “The road is out. Enter at your own risk.”
There the houses stop, lean as if aghast,
as if the flattened edge of the world
has made its abrupt existence known,
and you are brought up short
at the knowledge of some virtual abyss,
an insuperable wilderness;
the pavement crumpled despair, becomes an undulant sea,
sand, distant dismal mounds of scrub. Nothing out there.
Not even a pyramid to compensate
for this dispassionately negative scene.
Just a cloudless sky that holds its breath.
A child played where the desert began,
making doodles in the sand.
We stared, but it did not change;
it was no mirage, no miracle of flickering palms,
no oasis to water our dreams. We U’eed
the car and drove back
to the center of town. Without signs
we are at a loss to know what is true,
or where we are.