The incense trade route transported frankincense

and myrrh, saplings as well as resin,

aromatic and medicinal,

from what is now part of the Yemen

northwards along the Red Sea coast

and then north east across the Negev

to the port of Gaza and the Great Sea.

It was a twice yearly sixth month journey

for a millennium and a half.

As empires shifted the trade moved elsewhere.

 

***

 

The fabled Queen of Sheba and her

fabulous entourage of courtiers

and of camel trains carrying gold,

and spices, and precious stones,

followed most of the route on her way

to Jerusalem to surprise Solomon

in his royal citadel. She disbelieved

the tales she had heard about the king’s wisdom

and his wealth, and intended to ‘prove him

with hard questions’. He answered so well

that she gave him all of the gifts she had brought.

‘And she said to the king…the half was not told me’.

Perhaps she had just found out about his

‘seven hundred wives…three hundred concubines’.

 

***

 

Dispensing some self-righteous, PR version

of King Solomon’s ‘judgement and justice’,

and each worth considerably more than

any king’s bounty, a ballistic missile

will take ten minutes or so from the Yemen

to Israel and vice versa. Though empires shift,

and death smells of TNT and rocket fuel,

each apocalypse comes with smoke and fire,

and no answers.