May you forget Egypt, the blue nights
and the sound of a felucca slapping softly across the Nile,
the temples to the gods lit like ceremonial fires across the shore.
May you never again imagine the shape of a goddess.
May you remember only the lips
of a camel drooling its refusal
to bend down and let you climb on its back
for the last of the journey up
Mount Sinai. And may you forget
the density of the stars
the moistureless desert night
wrapped around you like a thick Moslem veil
as you reached the top, but remember only
the trash and broken rocks of the monument
to where Moses stood once upon a time
and may you never, never remember
how it felt to feel the breeze, like God’s breath
across your skin when the first rays of dawn
stretched across the stone slabs, rock and sand of that desert’s teeth.