Tag Archives: Sheba

Don’t Mess w/Sheba

The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it:
because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation,and shall condemn it:
for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.
Matthew 12:41,42

It’s Sunday again for you cloistered patricians
aloof from the madness, the magic and myth;
who trust in your wisdom, investments, physicians
unready to answer forthwith:

Why bother with worship—in church or the zoo—
why weaken the links with a dull set of tools ?
you ask yourself over your high-end Tarrazu,
bemused at the fables of fools.

You’ve bartered salvation for New York Times articles,
sipping on bitterness (shade-grown organic).
You settle for molecules, atoms and particles
unfairly-traded, satanic—

while you celebrate emptiness, general futility
musing on nothingness, sure of specifics
ensconced in your kitchen of pampered gentility
flirting with atheist physics.

Those simple plebeians:  you’d love to enlighten them
help them, like you, to become a free-thinker
but you remain tasteful, for boldness might frighten them
reeling in fairy tales: hook, line and sinker.

Yet somebody, somewhere has uttered your sentence
(though you abhor judgement, let’s read it again).
Sheba and Nineveh, versed in repentance
await you—not whether but when.

The darkness is brewing unholy filtration;
the wine of the harlot approaches the rim;
your guilt is augmenting in slow percolation;
you shrug it all off on a whim.

The souls of Assyria rise from your paper
they watch in amazement, prepare your abyss.
Your coffee now brims a more sulfurous vapor;
oh sinner —there’s something amiss:

The crypts of Marib and the tombs of the Axumites
shudder and groan while you’re reading the Times…
(immune to the words that some Christarded  poet writes
mixing psychosis with rhymes.)

Royal Sheba will chastise your erudite unbelief,
smug self-importance and cynical talk.
Then she’ll sigh with immense Ethiopian grief
and her Highness Queen Bilqis will balk—

It is Sunday in Babylon.  What if your sunlight ends…
why are there mobs in the streets of the nation?
Shall you have breakfast ? —or calculate dividends…
what would you pay for salvation?

Kushitic Closure

This poem is inspired by memories of a lovely and kind-hearted Ethiopian university student who lived with my family when I was ten. She introduced us to berbere and doro wat, and taught me to appreciate gastronomy from Africa’s horn. She had a beautiful smile, she had a Wilson Pickett record and she initiated me into the mysteries of pop music and the radio. Her name was Adeye. This was in the mid-70’s just before the Marxist coup which brought in Haile Mengistu Mariam. We lost touch with her long ago. The poem is also inspired by times I have been offered coffee among Ethiopian people, who have a beautiful ceremony involving frankincense when they partake.

One last Kushitic dream—be patient: once I was at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in the Egyptian mummy room (a Coptic one-liner there for you). I was chatting with a beautiful Eritrean security guard among the crypts. Mysteriously, everyone cleared out and for a short while it was only the two of us, surrounded by opened sarcophagi in the dimly-lit room. For a moment I thought I was speaking with the eternal spirit of some princess who had just climbed out of one of them !

 

Kaffa-Coffee

Abyssinia

I long to know that land in spirit
where the highlands meet the desert.
Where there’s faith and coffee served
with ceremony still observed.

The white-robed land, where priests intone
in levite ritual ‘round the ark.
A land in clouds of frankincense,
whose past is bitter, strong and dark. 

meroe02

I’ll enter where the rock is carved
in cruciform epiphany;
where Midian’s curtains hide the starved
whose hunger feeds conspiracy. 

I’ll walk the wilds of Meroë
all ruined in the desert sands,ethiop cross
where beauty wails and ululates
as silver gleams on amber strands.

Her kings and peasants come to naught
when princes’ plots are overthrown.
Her blameless name was never bought;
her faith in Christ is scribed in stone.

lalibela04

Queen Sheba’s golden sepulcher – 
your modern guises can’t suffice
to quench the fire of God and spice.

Davidic land—like calvary
your power purifies the heart
through struggle, prayer, and ancient art.

Hard Questions

𐩣𐩧𐩨/𐩣𐩧𐩺𐩨

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree . . .
Coleridge: Kubla Khan

Sheba’s wailing Queen laments for Yemen:

Her incense trees are lacerated, scarred.

Sapped for their fragrance, drained of life and marred

Their smoking blood offered up to heaven.

No sinuous rills flow forth to bless the dead;

Beneath her ruined dam no gardens grow;

And Bedouins only sing of what they know

In wastelands of the nomad past. It’s said

That all those spices, all that golden smoke

and irrigated dreams beneath the sand

were just a subtle Solomonic joke.

The yearly weight of gold, the camel-trains,

Are cryptic numbers—chanted in refrains

That only Marib’s phantoms understand.

 

PROMPT #4: write a poem based on an image from a dream.

Sinister Solomonic Insinuations

ethiopian crucifix    Eth Icon    GOLD666

Etiopia Yemen

WE cannot tell exactly who the Queen of the South was,
nor exactly where Sheba lay. The expression used is Yemen, the south. Yemen is the name of a part of Arabia Felix and it would appear from the spices which the Queen brought with her that she came from that region. At the same time, the Abyssinians claim her as having been their queen. They say that she was converted through her conversations with Solomon, that afterwards the faith of God was preserved in the country, and hence that that famous Ethiopian, who was a eunuch of great authority under Candace in later times, was a proselyte to the Jewish faith on account of that faith existing in Abyssinia. 

A Greater Than Solomon 
[Sermon #3166 by Charles Spurgeon – published October 14, 1909]
www.spurgeongems.org

And King Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all that she desired, whatever she asked besides what was given her by the bounty of King Solomon. So she turned and went back to her own land with her servants. Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold, besides that which came from the explorers and from the business of the merchants, and from all the kings of the west and from the governors of the land.

1 Kings 10:13-15 [ESV]

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls:
for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it,
neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

Job 28: 18-19 [KJV]

This calls for wisdom:
let the one who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast,
for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

Revelation 13:18

ICON IMAGE CREDIT: Simaschew Mesfin, from  http://www.betsyporter.com