Kay Hassan
The city of Alexandria in
I
When you set sail for Alexandria's shore,
Don’t tread lightly, the ancient tales implore,
No guiding star above its storied ground,
Amidst khamaseen's rage, no solace found.
No rapacious augur should dare intrude,
Not one of Magi with their gifts imbued,
Nor speak in dialect of Alexandria's birth,
Yet sit with Cavafy, poetry's hearth.
Tribute to Hypatia, wisdom's guide,
Lady of Socrates' truths implied,
Dine with Neo-Platonists' discourse,
In Ptolemy's realm,
measure Mediterranean shores,
And azure tide.
Listen to papyruses' whispers,
read history's pride,
and reconstruct Lighthouse's beacon,
a flicker's grace,
where ancient trace,
hidden in its embrace.
Slow down, passer-by, heed history's plea,
Embrace the city's soul,
and take your of its legacy,
None shall grasp Alexandria's essence,
But transient souls, not bound by pretense.
‘My Sibling -’
Resist the urge to weave myths anew,
The Macedonian boy, Achilles true,
Dug a thousand graves in timeless sand,
Not the best grave digger, you understand.
‘You are from nowhere,’ echoes the wind,
‘Et-Ego-bin-nicht-terrestrial’ pinned,
Let's, then, son of no man's domain,
Explore the city's joy, turmoil, and pain.
Philosophers graced these ancient streets,
Euclid's geometry, genius replete,
Hypatia's brilliance, a guiding light,
Plotinus' Neoplatonism's flight.
Philo bridged faiths, philosophy intertwined,
Plotinus' wisdom forever enshrined,
Origen's Christian teachings profound,
Alexandria's scholars, wisdom's crown.
Remember, your dimention,
Though you are in Alexandria,
Far from Giza,
Pharaoh's shadow looms o'er sands of old,
Pyramids, relics of tales untold,
Moses' myth, across the sea,
Tales for all to see.
Cleopatra's love, Antonio's embrace,
A queen's allure, a conqueror's grace,
French and English, landing on her shores,
Empires clashed in history's wars.
Through bustling alleys, storytellers weave,
Echoes of philosophers, wisdom to believe,
Screams of the city, a symphony profound,
In each cobblestone, history's sound,
In looking for Ptolmies' cemetry,
Local archeologists nodded to me:
If you are keen to feel Ptolmies' remains
Cry on the tombs in the western cemetery,
But I went deep into the city,
In markets alive with vibrant hues,
Voices rise, blend with ocean's cues,
Bazaars of knowledge, treasures to find,
In the city's heart, my soul,
makes the universe combined.
From Euclid's math to Hypatia's gaze,
Wars and wisdom, through history's maze,
In each whispering wind, tales unfold,
Screams of the city, stories of old.
Amidst dustbins, treasures still reside,
Echoes of conquerors, battles fought with pride,
Eloquent waiters serve memories on a tray,
Amid screams of the city, whisper and sway.
Let the tales of Alexandria take hold,
Screams of the city, stories unfold,
A symphony of history, passions aflame,
In every corner, the city's vibrant name
***
Indeed
when you set sail for Alexandria,
Don’t treat the season lightly, (Like Bonaparte- Not part of the poem.)
There is no star -above the city. ( In khamaseen. Not part of the poem)
Don’t be any rapacious augur,
You are none of those three Magi, (Laden with gold, frankincense, and myrrh at Bethlehem's night .Not part of the poem. )
And not speaking Alexandria's Dialect,
To sit with Cavafy in the city’s cafés,
Or give a tribute speech to Hypatia ,
the lady of Socrates’ Trades.
And dine with the Neo-Platonists ,
Or measure under Ptolemy,
The shores of Mediterranean sea
And classify the ancient papyrus in the Royal Library!
Or glimpse even a flicker from the ancient Lighthouse,
Slow down, passer-by ...you are tired,
Slow down and learn;
None of those wretched passengers shall come to the city,
Thou arst, but a wicked passer-by,
‘My Sibling -’
Don't fix the myths of Alexandria ,
The Macedonian boy was a stray Achilles,
Dug for himself a thousand graves.
You are not the best grave digger,
‘You are from nowhere.’
‘Et -Ego- bin - nicht - terrestrial.’
LETS THEN; SON OF NO MAN,
Hit the city where hungry breeds,
Digging up dustbins for Pharaoh's leftover- ‘I MEAN TOURISTS’ LEFTOVER‘ IT IS NOT PART OF THE POEM.
And listen to the eloquent waiters ,
Holding blurry glasses for the cheapest bitter ,
Cackling - politics, like sluts in hurry.
The original Version
One Night I Hit the City of Alexandria
I
When you embark for Alexandria’s sacrosanct littoral,
Eschew—eschew pusillanimous perambulation, I vociferate, I fulminate!
No sidereal scintilla perforates her khamaseen’s obfuscatory penumbra,
Amidst its Stygian paroxysm, no solace avails—my fissured optics incandesce!
I am the peregrinator, an apocryphal eidolon sans lineage or nomenclature,
A phantasmal cinder, where astral pyres excoriate the psyche.
No rapacious haruspex dares profane her cosmogonic demesne,
No Magian hierophants, laden with auriferous oblations, obtrude.
Nor articulate her thalassic vernacular, an antediluvian litany of woe,
Yet I, I consort with Cavafy, hierophant of logos refulgent!
His stylus a meteoritic arc, his taberna a liminal rift in temporality’s veil,
I intone her verities, though none arrogate them to my apophatic essence.
Tribute to Hypatia, sapience’s apotheosized cynosure,
Socratic scion, her verities incised in dialectical radiance.
Sympose with Neo-Platonists, their ratiocinative maelstrom an empyrean vortex,
In Ptolemy’s cosmographic hegemony, calibrate the Mediterranean’s littoral,
And its cerulean effluxion, a numinous confluence.
Harken—papyrus susurra, an anamnesis of historiographic hubris,
Decipher chronicles’ vainglory, etched in aeons’ detritus,
Reconstitute the Pharos’s effulgence, a scintilla’s thaumaturgic grace,
Where primordial arcana,
Occulted in its sidereal embrace, persist.
Tarry, peregrinator, heed temporality’s vatic imprecation,
Apprehend the urbs’s anima,
And arrogate its perdurable bequest.
None shall apprehend Alexandria’s quiddity,
Save evanescent pneuma, unfettered by mendacious pretense.
Her lithic conduits are cosmogonic filigree,
Each arenaceous palimpsest a sidereal annal of hegemony’s evanescence.
From Alexander’s pyric scintilla to Caesar’s ephemeral diadem,
I ululate her epics where empires immolated their essence.
Her zephyrs, not risible, but vatic keening,
Prophesy through chronos’s atramentous interstices.
II
“My consanguine!”—I vociferate, from an aporetic no-man’s liminality,
Abjure refabricating Alexandria’s mythopoeia anew!
The Macedonian ephebe, Achillean in pyric apotheosis,
Excavated sepulchers—a chiliad!—in her perdurable silicates,
No preeminent fossor, you apprehend, his ossuary relics deliquesce.
“You’re nusquam!” keens the zephyr, my phantasmal affinal,
“Et-Ego-bin-nicht-terrestrial!”—I grimace, apophatic and feral.
Let us, then, progeny of nihility’s demesne,
Plumb the urbs’s euphoria, its excruciation, its anamnesis.
His fevered psyche, unabsolved by sidereal apogees,
Carved a cosmopolis where mortal oneirata converge.
Yet Alexandria’s anima transcends his pyrrhic triumphs,
Her pulse a thaumaturgic cadence through aeons’ anfractuosity.
I, peregrinator, dance through his spectral detritus,
My vox a cacophonous antiphon to his evanescent glory.
Her vicissitudes hum with hegemon’s umbrae,
Where Caesar’s legions and Ptolemaic dynasts bled.
I weave their shades, their pyres, their broken scepters,
In alleys where temporality’s veil is shred.
III
Philosophes traversed these heliacal arteries,
Their cogitations a conflagration of logocentric virtuosity.
Euclid’s schemata, a reticulum of astral ratiocination,
Map order through chaos’s ineffable anfractuosity.
Hypatia’s coruscation, a cynosure through cosmic penumbra,
Socratic scion, her logos excoriates dogmatic fetters.
I genuflect at her fane, her scrutiny my perennial litany,
Her immolation a cicatrix that haunts my aporetic psyche.
Plotinus’s Neoplatonic ascension, a transcendental apogee,
His Monad a sidereal summons I claw with raucous threnody.
Philo’s syncretic span, entwining Hebraic and Platonic epistemes,
I perambulate his trajectory, though stars my path subvert.
Origen’s Christological exegesis, ontologically profound,
His vox a pyre through celestial interstices.
Eratosthenes, calibrator of Terra’s cosmographic ambit,
His sieve of primes an epistemophilic talisman.
Callimachus, poet-scholar, wove elegiac tapestries,
His pinakes taxonomizing nous’s boundless arcana.
Apollonius of Rhodes, bard of Argonautic peregrination,
His epics echo where Alexandria’s muses incant.
Arius, heresiarch, sundered Christendom’s dogma,
His disputations reverberate in her annalistic agorae.
The Bibliotheca’s cinders, a veil I rend with apotropaic spite,
Its umbrae ascend, codices ablaze with empyrean light.
Calliope ululates, her mythopoeic vox my lodestar,
Clio’s calamus, annalistic, inscribes temporality’s arcana.
I, peregrinator, sans radix, sans requiem, sans supplication,
A vatic lost in her empyrean ocean.
IV
Recollect thy dimension, peregrinator,
Though ensconced in Alexandria’s empyrean embrace,
Distant from Giza’s monolithic penumbra,
Pharaonic umbrae loom o’er arenaceous antiquities,
Pyramids, reliquaries of apocryphal chronicles,
Mosaic mythos, traversing the mare’s vast hypnogogia,
Narratives for omnifarious apprehension.
Cleopatra’s eros, Antonio’s concupiscent embrace,
A regina’s numinous allure, a conqueror’s ephemeral grace,
Gallic and Britannic incursions on her selenic littoral,
Hegemonies clashed in historiographic belligerence.
Through crepuscular vicissitudes, mythographers interlace,
Umbrae of philosophes, noetic verities to embrace,
Screams of the city, a symphonic apotheosis,
In each lithic sigil, temporality’s resonance.
In quest of Ptolemaic sepulchers, occulted in aeons’ detritus,
Autochthonous archaeologists, with taciturn acquiescence,
Proffer: “If thou art fain to apprehend Ptolemaic vestiges,
Lament o’er the ossuaries in the occidental necropolis.”
Yet I, peregrinator, forswore sepulchral lamentations,
Plunging into the urbs’s thaumaturgic epicenter.
Her agorae effloresce with cosmogonic tinctures,
Vociferations ascend, amalgamating with thalassic susurrus,
Emporia of nous, arcana scintillating in esoteric splendor,
In the urbs’s nucleus, my pneuma,
Consummates the cosmos’s synergetic confluence.
Her alleys are sidereal filigree, where temporality deliquesces,
Each cobblestone a rune, pulsating with thaumaturgic cadence.
Mercators’ cries transmute to oracular litanies,
Their wares effulgent with littoral arcana—seric, myrrh, and stardust.
I palpate a textile—it resonates with thalassic cosmogonies,
A piscator’s reticulum, entwined with Orion’s apothegms.
Tabernae flicker, lucernae casting necromantic glamour,
I consort with Cavafy’s umbra, his stanzas an oneiric incantation.
Fumous tendrils trace sidereal hieroglyphs,
I divine fata in caffeinated lees’ apocryphal configurations.
Servitors glide, their salvers a sidereal liturgy,
Their cachinnations interweave through Alexandria’s nocturnal apogee.
Each calix elevated—a grail of cosmographic arcana,
I imbibe her verities, though I’m nusquam’s progeny.
Her bazaars are empyrean crucibles, where phantasms scintillate,
Each hue a strophe in fate’s ineffable canticle.
I wander, astray, where shadows intone her nomen sacrum,
Her vicissitudes portals to eternity’s ambrosial bloom.
Beneath the selenic orb, alleys writhe in cosmic terpsichore,
Hypatia’s umbra glimmers in sidereal resplendence,
Her vox a susurrus from inframundane transcendence.
From Euclid’s logocentric calculi to Hypatia’s perspicuous scrutiny,
Belligerence and sapience navigate temporality’s labyrinthine anfractuosity,
In each zephyr’s susurrus, chronicles unfurl,
Screams of the city, annals primordial.
Amidst detrital receptacles, arcana perdure,
Umbrae of hegemonists, belligerent hubris immured,
Eloquent servitors, hierophants of anamnesis,
Proffer reminiscences on salvers of tarnished patina,
Amid screams of the city, susurrus and oscillation.
Her markets pulsate with oneiric effulgence,
Each cry a thaumaturgy, each stall a cosmic fane.
I see Callimachus’s shade, taxonomizing muses’ lore,
Apollonius’s epics hum where waves and stars implore.
Arius’s disputations echo, sundering dogmatic chains,
In Alexandria’s agorae, where eternity reigns.
Let Alexandria’s mythopoeia enrapture,
Screams of the city, chronicles in apotheosis,
A symphonic historiographic conflagration,
In each crevice, her numinous nomen resonates.
V
“You’re nusquam!”—the zephyr’s vatic dirge, my cicerone,
An evanescent eidolon, sans locus to arrogate.
No sidereal chart, no nomen to hypostasize,
Yet Alexandria’s conflagration immolates my ossified state.
Am I an umbra, a scintilla in her thaumaturgic effulgence?
A Nous’s scintilla, or cinders where constellations fray?
The urbs’s rictus—O, a cosmic falchion’s edge!
“You’re the aporia, incised on eternity’s pledge!”
Cavafy’s umbra, in tabernae where lucernae oscillate,
Inscribes stanzas where my pneuma’s both anathematized and consecrate.
I imbibe his logos, my vox a cacophonous antiphon,
I’m hers—though sidereal apogees disavow my genesis.
The Pharos collapses, yet haunts my febrile phantasia,
Its scintilla vociferates—O, through the astral anastasia!
What verity perdures where hegemonies transmute to detritus?
I ululate, I excoriate, through temporality’s unyielding crevasse.
Plotinus susurrates, “Seek the Monad, be consummate,”
Yet agorae enchant with vita that eviscerates.
Hypatia’s scrutiny, through aeons’ sidereal interstice,
Commands I pursue the verity, though verity’s my precipice.
In emporia’s radiance, I descry the cosmos gyrate,
Each mercator’s vociferation a litany where numina create.
I perambulate, apocryphal, through vicissitudes’ thaumaturgic anfractuosity,
My pneuma a comet, immolated in her sidereal effulgence.
Callimachus’s pinakes, a taxonomized cosmogony,
Apollonius’s Argonauts, navigating her thalassic odyssey,
Arius’s heresies, fracturing Christendom’s episteme,
Their voices weave through Alexandria’s oneiric dream.
I, peregrinator, am their echo, their aporetic refrain,
A vox clamantis in her cosmic, ineffable terrain.
VI
What’s this urbs, but an incantation in my venae?
A crucible where mortal oneirata and pangs amalgamate.
Colliding with sidereal numina, with apotheosized specters,
I, peregrinator, her cosmographic arcana dissect.
The Muses terpsichore where Bibliotheca’s cinders incandesce,
Calliope’s pneuma inflames my apocryphal essence.
Clio’s calamus, with annalistic sidereal inscription,
Inscribes my nomen—though I’m no mortal’s depiction.
Cleopatra’s eros, a comet’s pyric apogee,
Conflagrates where memoria and mythopoeia agree.
Her vox, her oculus, through temporality’s numinous veil,
I ululate her nomen—O, concupiscence’s cosmic trail!
The khamaseen fulminates, yet her anima’s unfettered,
Her lithics are constellations where mortal pneuma are tethered.
Each vociferation, each susurrus, weaves a sidereal filament,
I hymn of vitae that amated, contended, exsanguinated.
Her vicissitudes a cosmos, her lithics a sidereal mare,
Each anima a comet—none more errant than I ensnared.
In Alexandria, diurn and noct traverse,
I, peregrinator, am hers—her thaumaturgy’s verse.
Her agorae are empyrean crucibles, where phantasms scintillate,
Each hue a strophe in fate’s ineffable canticle.
I see Hypatia’s shade, her scrutiny a sidereal flame,
Plotinus’s Monad, a vision no mortal can tame.
Cavafy’s verses, etched in tabernae’s crepuscular glow,
Bind my pneuma to her eternal, cosmic flow.
Coda
Indeed, when you embark for Alexandria’s littoral,
Eschew—eschew pusillanimity, like Bonaparte’s hubristic vainglory!
No sidereal scintilla in khamaseen’s cosmographic tumult,
I, peregrinator, expectorate conflagration from my vociferation!
Abjure haruspex’s avarice,
You’re no Magian, laden with aurum, olibanum, and myrrh at Bethlehem’s nocturn!
Nor articulate her vernacular, an antediluvian litany,
Yet consort with Cavafy in tabernae of numinous gloaming,
Or apostrophize Hypatia,
Socratic scion of logocentric vocations!
Sympose with Neo-Platonists, their dialectics a sidereal maelstrom,
Or calibrate, sub Ptolemy,
The Mediterranean’s thalassic ambit,
And taxonomize antediluvian papyrus in the Bibliotheca Regia!
Or glimpse a scintilla from the Pharos’s empyrean,
A flicker defying thanatotic dogma!
Tarry, peregrinator, thou art languorous,
Tarry and apprehend;
No execrable itinerants shall apprehend the urbs,
Thou art, an aporetic peregrinator,
“My consanguine!”—
Abjure refabricating Alexandria’s mythopoeia,
The Macedonian ephebe, a vagrant Achilles,
Excavated for himself a chiliad sepulchers.
No preeminent fossor, you apprehend,
“You’re nusquam!”—the zephyr keens, my vatic cicerone,
“Et-Ego-bin-nicht-terrestrial!”—I ululate, I excoriate!
Let us, then, progeny of nihility,
Assault the urbs where voracious pneuma proliferate,
Excavating detrital receptacles for tourists’ sidereal residuum—
Not Pharaonic detritus, ye ephemera, I mean their oneirata!
And harken to eloquent servitors,
Proffering obfuscated calices of the most exiguous ichor,
Cachinnating civic dialectics with precipitous alacrity,
Their vociferations a thaumaturgy, a sidereal liturgy.
Screams of the city, a canticle in thaumaturgic apotheosis,
From Euclid’s calculi to Hypatia’s scrutiny,
From Ptolemy’s tides to Cavafy’s stanzas,
I, peregrinator, am hers—for temporality’s consummate anamnesis!
