From "East of Carthage"

From "East of Carthage"

[Khaled Mattawa]

1.

Look here, Marcus Aurelius, we've come to see your temple,
deluded the guards, crawled through a hole in the fence.
Why your offspring, my guide, opted for secrecy, I don't know.

But I know what to call the Africans, passport-less, yellow-eyed
who will ride the boat before me for Syracuse, they hope.
Here the sea curls its granite lips at them and flings a winter

storm like a cough, or the sea dog drops them at Hannibal's shores,
where they'll stand stupefied like his elephants. Nero's offspring may
arrest them in NATO ships and send them to Ovid's exile.

What dimension of time will they cross as the Hours loop tight
plastic ropes round their ankles and wrists? What siren song
will the trucks shipping them back to Ouagadougou drone into their ears?

I look at them loitering, waiting for the second act
of their darkness to fall. I look at the sky shake her dicey fists.
One can be thankful, I suppose, for not being one of them,

and wrap the fabric of that thought around oneself
to keep the cold wind at bay, but what world is this
that makes our lives so efficient even as the lead-blue horizon

is about to burst, having contained all that leaned on its back,
even as the sky and sea ache to join into an open-ended road?
That's what we're all waiting for, a moment to peel itself like skin

off fruit, and let us in on its sweetness as we wait, smoking
or fondling provisions, listening to the engine's invocational purr.
In an hour that will dawn and dusk at once, one that will stretch into days

strung like beads on the horizon's throat, they will ride their tormented ship
as the Dog Star begins to float on the water, so bright and still,
you'd want to scoop it out in the palm of your hand.

4.

Earlier, I had walked the market of Sabratha, changed
to its people, but like my old city brought back to me.
The petty merchants, all selling the same goods, shouted out
jokes to each other. A Sudanese waiter carried a tray
with a giant pot of green tea with mint. Among the older men,

their heads capped with crimson shennas, I kept seeking
my father's face. An old lust wafted past me when the abaya-clad
women, scented with knock-off Chanel, sashayed by.
The sawdust floors of the shawarma and falafel eateries,
the sandwich maker dabbing the insides of loaves

with spoons of searing harissa, my mouth watering
with a burning from childhood. Pyramids of local oranges,
late-season pomegranates, radish and turnip bulbs
stacked like billiard balls, and the half carcasses of lambs
as if made of wax and about to melt off their hooks,

the trays of hearts, kidneys, brains and testicles arranged
in slick arabesques. The handwoven rugs where
the extinct mouflon thrives, the glittering new aluminum
wares, the blenders, mincers, hair dryers, and toasters,
their cords like tentacles drooping from rusty shelves.

It was as if my eyes were painting, not seeing, what I saw,
as if I were spewing the scene until it assembled whole.
What face did my face carry in the midst of transfiguration?
I know what the eyes of the men my age said, settled now
in comfortable middle age, about the life I left behind.

True, I did envy them the asceticism of their grace,
where a given horizon becomes a birthright—to drive or walk
past the same hills all your life, to eat from the same tree
and drink from the same well that gave you your name.

5.

Two centuries ago, one of my ancestors sat
on one of the communal latrines in midmorning
and listened to Apuleius's defense. Across from him
on that marble hexagon sat two other...