The Dead Sea

Mudcaked,  head to toe, covered and cracked,
Beneath the level of seas with less salty brine,
We cover skin and suits from out of muddy vats
While beyond the saltiest one we spy

The lilac hills of Moab. And here, where
The sun shines far and hard but never close,
I hear a voice or two from Lancashire;
Same yet paler people than our eastern hosts. 

Pale legs as white as the nucleus of the sun,
Orthodox Jews, father, mother, little girl,
Whose strange northern voices, stand among
Us on this small shore, the other side of the world. 
.

And this sea, dead, alive only in a glazed shine.
Where nary a boat is ever detected,
Nor no fish below on which to dine,
Stirs only with clouds so vaguely reflected. 

The pasty-thighed wife is in her one piece 
Costume. Above this, her wide brimmed hat
Covers a modest head.  God’s law is appeased.
Among the salt and shine all is fine except that

Her mud stained costume does not do the same.
For in her nether region semitic, wiry, thin
Curls, a grove amid the desert, entwine a leg untamed 
Like the asp round the tree that sent the world to sin.

A small brown bushel of her pubic hair
Peek-a-boos from without and I feign to ask
If her god, unlike me, will overlook down there.
But no answer will come from beyond the vast

Wide waste of time. My thoughts are mere
Reflections like the glass of the salty sea
Whose mirrored surface gleams bright and as clear,
While under the deep is deeper uncertainty.

My uncovered dome resists the heat of
The sun. I am now buoyed by water as I cast
Off desert mud as it falls in brown clumps.
My feet pierce the surface like pale sails on masts.

The tear of one sail is the sharp cut between toes,
The result of new sandals, now forgotten pain.
But the salt-sting leaves me in the throes
of chemistry. Here is remembrance again.

There the purple hills speak to another space

Where the King of Moab, the old coot,
Has neither the time nor will to waste
On frail floating enemies with one wounded foot.

Modern Sisyphus

Sid's fuss was he walked and plodded and walked

At a forty-five degree

Angle (if, in geometrical talk,

you were inclined). His knees heaved heavily    

Like two brains weary of the skin they’re in

And, needing much required rest,    

Aspired to be on level ground again.

Both bone and mind worked hard to do their best.

The central source, the one inside his skull,

Like the popliteal joints, also

Throbbed as he pushed thoughts up a cerebral hill.

Ideas on high and laboured, he feared, roll

Right back down again. So life of mind he deemed

An everlasting upward push                                       

Where thought was naught for naught and all seemed

Worthless. Interruption was a singing thrush

In a garden. Lush vegetation grew in spurts.

Between leaves a porcelain god

Sat smiling. A spinning pinwheel (to scare off birds?)

Pierced the ground of this strange slope of sod.

The bloated god in the garden was not winking.

Here the illusion felt firm.

As the slippery slow sun began sinking,

The wheel simply danced shadows on his face as it turned.

This sight caused a rolling but without the care

Though the thought failed to waiver.

His mind let it roll and fall everywhere

And Sid self-promised, on a slant, to love the labour.