Looking For Alexander

I came into Siwa

not on horseback like Alexander the Great

seeking godhood and the world

but on a bus crated with chickens

stopping at small waystations

where we might defecate

into a hole in the ground

owned and operated by children

who would take our coins

and bid us proceed.

Then pulled in a cart

by another young entrepreneur

from the bus stop to my hotel

overlooking a grove of strange trees

and already rented to

roaches the size of scarabs.

I asked the owner if it ever rained

and he gestured with a wave,

“It rained once in 1926 and

washed away the town.”

At first light I walked to the temple

where Alexander spoke to an Oracle

through spirited walls wailing

who decreed he would be a god king.

Alone in this hall I heard nothing

so grand, only my own longing

and so I stole away to parts

off limits that I might carry away

any souvenir or relic to recall him.

At the bottom of a cobwebbed well

slanted in the earth

I found shattered pottery

I imagined he drank from

and bore a hole through it

to make a necklace.

Caked in desert heat I swam in a

seemingly bottomless oasis,

took pictures of the bleached bone carcass

of an unknown species of cattle

and stared at the burned sands where I

pictured his body lay hidden and buried.

In the village streets children followed me

and asked about the world at large.

One had a toy pieced

of a battery and a leaf

that would spin towards Mecca.

I bought them sodas and a soccer ball

and we kicked until it set with the sun.

I never did find him there

but under the sickle moon

where he once marched an army

these Egyptians made me feel like a Pharaoh

foreign and of a different time

but a Pharaoh still.