Temptation

If it were a desert of shifting dunes,
a heat to burn the brain,
mesukah the only shade, a last acacia
till only cacti needles
prick the seared conscience.

If this street was a wadi,
the sun a blister, my sandaled feet sore,
the Palestine viper side-winding
through ribs of fiery sand,
a scorpion under every rock.

If I were prey to Judean lions
at one with the desert fox, the jackal;
full of meaning and purpose,
if I were a god, a man-god
and all shadow had substance.

If the timeless stars were a story
unfolding to the ends of earth;
and the deceiver bid me eat the stony street
or throw myself down from the clock tower-
then what epic abstinence.

But the snake is sheathed in a desert of days
and sucked to pass through the eye of a needle.
It's all cock and bull I tell myself:
man-made sin, man-made death.
I walk on puddles to burn in bushes.