EGYPT NEVERMORE At the foot of the mountain and getting power over the legs, walking with the legs and coming forth upon earth, on a staircase leading up to the roof with the feet tied together, changing into a lotus, changing into a phoenix, changing into a heron, changing into a serpent, changing into a crocodile, changing into the god who giveth light and not dying a second time: O golden hawk with human head! O man come back to see his home! Papaluka, papaluka, papalur . . . I make offerings that I may pass through. Hail, cat, sacred to Bast! I am with those that weep. Hail, frog of fertility! I am the women who bewail. Hail, shrew-mouse! I have opened the way to resurrection. Hail, jackal! I have made a path in the valley of the hawk-headed moon. Open to me! I am one of you. O my heart, my mother! What is this to which I have come? A man cannot live and be satisfied, he cannot satisfy the craving of affection. Here is a woman kneeding dough, her breast bare with creeping things. Here is a man poking a fire, the flame whereof cannot be quickened. Here, in the garden, is a little girl clasping the internal organs of Isis, her little nails dyed with the juice of henna (she lived eleven years and twenty-five days.) And here a mummy, whose name is broken, the slave who was slain when his master died: and here a limestone table of offerings and weeping women, blackened with bitumen. And here, before a house, the man I was, lying on a bier with my wife and children. I take their hands but their arms are gone: I kiss their lips but their eyes are dust. And again, my wife among lotus flowers, standing in water, embracing my name. I touch her limbs through her linen robe and lay my hands on her bewigged head, while a cat springs out from the papyrus reeds and a spotted snake flees from the knife. I grasp a beetle by the leg and worship our souls in a living tree. Homage to thee, O heart! Homage to thee, O truth! Our souls shall not perish, our faces shall not change. We shall live, we shall germinate! On the thirteenth day of the month Paoni, an Egyptian undertaker gave me a look. I wanted a god for every limb but I was buried with the poor among the Theban hills.
(1940)