Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Mummy

The Mummy

Et ceci vient de au dela du Fleuve Lethe.

Gauze all wadded,
linen in these strips,
Shake out the dust,
Stitched up so serenely
The seams lined up in peace
In pieces, all spread out perfectly.
The pattern is old, all wrong
Wrong and tattered and torn.
Dinosaur cloth, it covers
The buried bones,
All rough,
stone.
Scarred up hands, shrunken to shape, dyed and stained
Covering over the face, scarred,
Worn out teeth, short and charred
In the inbetweens,
Dyed
Stained.
Scarred from eating all this stone
And digging up bone.
Hair miles wide, sticking out,
Completely gone,
Matted down
Like oil to the head,
Long long long
Like stretched out days
and
Daylight
Used up over too many dark nights
Spare sparks
All spend up.
Dyed and colored 
the dead things 
turning to powder 
to the touch
Leaving fingerprints
In broken bone
Dried up blood
Wrapped up in a kind of lace
Dead earth and rough cloth.