By Stuart McFarlane

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Triangles Eternal

The night is iron ore, the sky as black as flint and stars,

like sparks of silver, innocently glint; 

time, itself, seems melted down, its vital essence tamed

by these strange forms; so silently, so perfectly, framed

against an opal moon where, like lava flowing,

the desert sands ripple, orange embers glowing.

Triangles eternal – shapes cut out of the night;

each one a prism absorbing a beam of light

that inculcates unseen sinews of stone,

down a deep shaft that threads the inner cone,

until, slowly, revealing a once secret room,

an ancient burial chamber; a pharoah’s tomb. 

Perhaps, like Tutankhamun, his face a mask of solid gold.

To imagine; conceive of? Yet to actually behold?

Bold amulets and jewels, all red, blue and green,

in a chaos of colour that glitters and gleams;

or his chariots, his magnificent treasure; 

a moment so precious would be beyond measure.

Now the light’s dimmer, gradually leaks away,

throwing a dark shroud over the place he still lay.

The beam retreats along the shaft; to now return

to a dark sky, where a few stars still faintly burn.

Soon the sands grow brighter, the sky a sapphire blue

and, as if all the myths were suddenly come true,

a golden sun rises – a new day dawns –

and the pyramids now are burnished bronze.

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Not merely monuments

As dawn reveals Luxor, I watch ancient temples rise

and, strangely, do I feel I am watched by other eyes.

This is not a dead land, these not merely monuments

to a heroic age, whose being is, somehow, lent

a ghostly presence by these structures in the sand.

These are living stones –ageing, yes, yet still they stand

against the desert storms, the ravages of Time.

Hewn from ancient quarries of sandstone, quartz and lime,

they entrance by their very impossibility;

that once ‘thought’ could conceive of, then find ability,

to construct such massive stones defies belief.

Perhaps, as we turn away, it’s with relief,

that we now settle back to more familiar things.

For we feel ill at ease in the valley of the kings.

Reluctantly, we realize what they underline;

that this, truly, was a far more remarkable time;

that our nuclear age, our rockets to the moon

just cannot compare with Tutankhamun’s tomb.