Alexander in Egypt,
in his buffetted tent,
reads his much-loved copy of The Iliad,
the one he keeps beneath his pillow,
as dark tugs pegs,
sand pressed in prints on the rug,
his tongue mint-flavoured from tea,
rough-tongued camels gargling thickly,
as my son, in his school hall,
in assembly,
in Adidas grey marl pants,
long-sleeved T-shirt,
sheet loosely pinned for a toga,
bearing the cardboard sign –
ALEXANDER THE GREAT –
his long curls still notionally blonde, beautiful
in that way boys are at their beginning,
voice unbroken,
throws his throat back, almost arrogant, sings:
I wanted more, more, more,
and we whoop as Alexander thinks of Persia,
gold and alabaster,
the governor dragged to death from a cart in Gaza
because it reminded him of the passage about Hector,
though it felt strangely unpoetic in the doing,
as if no Gods were watching,
and my son wants to see the world
as do the children of Gaza,
who my son and I speak little of
though that violence is an ambience,
but Alexander wants to talk, he’s lonely
and wonders aloud to Ptolemy
if the world might not be big enough,
that he might run out of territory,
though he surely knows the borders
that will stop him are temporal
and not spatial,
that he won’t reach the world’s edge,
spoken of by Aristotle,
beyond the Hindu Kush
where white mist spills into abyss,
but a mosquito’s tiny vengeance
will open an inferno,
a feverish ledge to end
his petty empire of days
at thirty-two – total defeat –
and I know I mustn’t pity him
but we can’t pity everyone
and he’s my son.