Egyptology

I am the Sphinx. I am the woman buried in sand up to her chin. I am waiting for an archaeologist to unearth me, to dig out my neck & my nipples, bare my claws & solve my riddle. No one has solved my riddle since Oedipus. I face the pyramids which rise like angular breasts from the dry body of Egypt. My fertile river is flowing down below- a lovely lower kingdom. Every woman should have a delta with such rich silt- brown as the buttocks of Nubian queens. O friend, why have you come to Egypt? Aton & Yahweh are still feuding. Moses is leading his people & speaking of guilt. The voice out of the volcano will not be still. A religion of death, a woman buried alive. For thousands of years the sand drifted over my head. My sex was a desert, my hair more porous than pumice, & nobody sucked my lips to make me tell. The pyramid breasts, though huge, will never sag. In the center of each one, a king lies buried. In the center of each one, a darkened chamber. . . a tunnel, dead men's bones, malignant gold.