I swear that day at Abu Simbel
the khamsin winds ripped me to shreds,
or I must have offended
that megalomaniac, Ramses II,
for the would-be god to make me ill.

The waters of Lake Nasser were raging
like the scales of some monstrous thing.
Khamsin fever gripped me. I sweated, slept,
held down crackers, peanut butter, little else.

The relentless Book of the Dead dreams:
buried by sand, eaten by crocodiles,
whipped for my insolence and beheaded.

I woke with a thousand miles of desert
far back in my mind—wherever it was.