Poem: The Queen of Sheba by Kathleen Jamie

[janne_d]

And then I read some more and felt like posting another poem to make up for getting out of the habit of it lately.

The Queen of Sheba

Scotland, you have invoked her name
just once too often
in your Presbyterian living rooms.
She's heard, yea
even unto heathenish Arabia
your vixen's bark of poverty, come down
the family like a lang neb, a thrawn streak,
a wally dug you never liked
but can't get shot of.

She's had enough.  She's come.
Whit, tae this dump?  Yes!
She rides the first camel
of a swaying caravan
from her desert sands
to the peat and bracken
of the Pentland hills
across the fitba pitch
to the thin mirage
of the swings and chute; scattered with glass.

Breathe that steamy musk
on the Curriehill Road, not mutton-shanks
boiled for broth, nor the chlorine stink
of the swimming pool where skinny girls
accuse each other of verrucas.
In her bathhouses women bear
warm pot-bellied terracotta pitchers
on their laughing hips.
All that she desires, whatever she asks
She will make the bottled dreams 
of your wee lassies
look like sweeties.

Spangles scarcely cover
her gorgeous breasts, hanging gardens,
jewels, frankincense; more voluptuous 
even than Vi-next-door, whose
high-heeled slippers
keeked from dressing gowns
like little hooves, wee tails
of pink fur stuffed in the cleavage of her toes;
more audacious even than Currie Liz
who led the gala floats
through the Wimpey scheme
in a ruby-red Lotus Elan
before the Boys' Brigade band
and the Brownies' borrowed coal-truck;
hair piled like candy-floss;
who lifted her hands from the neat wheel
to tinkle her fingers
at her tricks
    among the Masons and the elders and the police.

The cool black skin 
of the Bible couldn't hold her,
nor the atlas green
on the kitchen table,
you stuck with thumbs
and split to fruity hemispheres - 
yellow Yemen, Red Sea, Ethiopia.  Stick in
with the homework and you'll be
cliver like yer faither,
but no too cliver
no above yersel.

See her lead those great soft camels
widdershins round the kirk-yaird,
smiling
as she eats
avocados with apostle spoons
she'll teach us how.  But first
she wants to strip the willow
she desires the keys
    to the National Library
she is beckoning 
    the lasses
    in the awestruck crowd...

Yes, we'd like to 
    clap the camels,
to smell the spice,
admire her hairy legs and 
bonny wicked smile, we want to take
PhDs in Persian, be vice
to her president: we want
to help her
    ask some Difficult Questions

she's shouting for our wisest man
to test her mettle:

    Scour Scotland for a Solomon!

Sure enough: from the back of the crowd
someone growls:
    whae do you think y'ur?

and a thousand laughing girls and she
draw our hot breath
    and shout
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA!

-- Kathleen Jamie