OBLIVION

Near the great pyramid, unshadowed, white,

With apex piercing the white noon-day blaze,

Swathed in white robes beneath the blinding rays

Lie sleeping Bedouins drenched in white-hot light.

About them, searing to the tingling sight

Swims the white dazzle of the desert ways

Where the sense shudders, witless and adaze,

In a white void with neither depth nor height.

Within the black core of the pyramid

Beneath the weight of sunless centuries

Lapt in dead night King Cheops lies asleep;

Yet in the darkness of his chamber hid

He knows no black oblivion more deep

Than that blind white oblivion of noon skies.