Roopali Sircar Gaur Her Infinite Variety

She was tired. Her heart longed for a soothing hand on her burning forehead and a mother’s voice to gently rock her to sleep.

She was Cleopatra Beautiful and full of valour. Philosopher and polyglot Mathematician and astronomer Queen of Egypt.

They say she was cunning and wily Irresistible and sensual. They say she loved men.

Men loved her too. They loved her “infinite variety” It is true she gave herself to Caesar and to Mark Antony. To kings, noblemen and to her many gods she surrendered herself.

Did they not know she loved Egypt? For Egypt alone and for the dreams of her people she had left behind its lush land and the blue Nile Only to embrace an unhappy exile.

Those jewels in her crown hurt her queen head now lay uneasy. Her lacerated self throbbed with pain ground potions of gold and lotus seed could not cool her burning body.

This body she knew they would preserve wrapped in muslin, layered with medicinal leaves dipped in wild honey and ground with sea shells. Embalmed and stored in a vaulted pyramid she would live encased for a thousand years.

Gold dishes, spices, soft satin couches and silk quilts stitched with pearls

to keep the winter cold away. These and much more fit for a ueen’s journey to another world would accompany her on the final journey.

Everything for the body nothing for the soul. The ancients taught about death and nothing about life.

Bury me my beloved Egypt in your soft warm earth where I can hear the footfalls of the devout and my soul can awaken in the dawn to the voice of the muezzin calling the faithful with Azaan.

*Antony and Cleopatra William Shakespeare

Roopali Sircar Gaur Ph.D India

Roopali Sircar Gaur, Ph.D. is a lifelong teacher, poet, writer, environmentalist, social justice activist; and widely published columnist and writer. Roopali retired as Associate Professor of English from Delhi University, and has taught creative writing at the graduate level.

Her book The Twice Colonised: Women in African Literature is a seminal text on gender studies and post-colonial literature. Roopali is a columnist with Different Truths, a global participatory social journalism platform. Most recently, she has co-edited poetry anthologies In All the Spaces-Diverse Voices in Global Women’s Poetry and Earth, Fire, Water, Wind; and is the founder-editor of “Saraswati” an online literary and artistic journal. Her poems are also housed at Stanford University’s Digital Humanities initiative, and in the University of Bath’s Transnational project.