Wearing the beard of divinity, King Tut
hunts the hippopotamus of evil.
He cruises the nether world on the back
of a black leopard. And here he has put
on his special pectoral, the one
painted with granulated gold. This will
adorn him as he crosses over.
I shuffle
in line on December seventh to see
how that royal departure took place.
A cast of thousands is passing this way.
No one looks up from the alabaster
as jets crisscross overhead. Our breaths
cloud the cases that lock in the gold
and lapis lazuli.
The Day
of infamy, Roosevelt called it. I was
a young girl listening to the radio
on a Sunday of hard weather. Probably
not one in seven packed in these rooms
goes back there with me.
Implicit
throughout this exhibit arranged
by Nixon and Sadat as heads of state
is an adamantine faith
in total resurrection.
Therefore the king is conveyed
with a case for his heart
and another magnificent
hinged apparatus, far too small,
for his intestines, all in place,
all considered retrievable
whereas if one is to be blown
apart over land or water
back into the Nothingness
that precedes light, it is better
to go with the simplest detail:
a cross, a dogtag,
a clamshell.
from The Retrieval System, Viking/Penguin, 1978
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