Memphis Shall Be Waste And Desolate Poem by Michael Burch

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather's house—
(actually his third new wife's) ,
in her daughter's bedroom
—one interminable summer
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas...

Lacking the words to describe
(ah!)those pearl-lustrous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.

Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendors.

Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharos, Rhakotis, Djoser's fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and "civilization."

Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander's corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milkwhite, in a jar of honey.

"Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant."
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.

Published by The Centrifugal Eye and The Centrifugal Eye Fifth Anniversary Anthology