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)