I. Egypt at Dawn
The immense Nile flows in the despair it rushes to the blue north sea. The horizon frames the tomb. Her eyes show the emptiness of the pyramids and of the sphinx. The shadow of three pyramids falls on the leaf of gold, overlaid on the ivory statue of a former pharaoh. Beneath green date palms, he predicts himself a future that makes him better known than the inventor of the telephone or the master of mass assembly. Peasants in the nearby fields see the slight wind quiver the palm leaves. The smoke from cook fires near the huts darkens yet the blue air. She lies on the black sofa of her very own living room. Below the first headline, she reads the names of cities from a map of ancient Egypt. When she reads "Dashur," she smiles. A touch later it might have been a mere consideration to write down the after occurrence just as one would the arrival of the mail after mad mail-order frenzy.
The falcon god Horus watches, hovering overhead. The serpent bleeds a blood, the color that fades now not from my mind--like the saddle on the camel in which that pilgrim sits in his quest for immortality. The mastaba shows hieroglyphs of silos shaped to contain either grain or nuclear missiles.
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Il. The Quest for Immortality
"I am here from France to shoot the nose from the Sphinx," Napoleon says softly to the turbans gathering about him.
If the lion symbolizes strength, then what of the screaming of that falcon that rests on the crest of a draft of warm air and circles ever the edges of cliffs in the southern deserts of North America?
I dream I walk in the crowd. On either side incarnate goddesses, who have been imported from the north of Memphis just for this occasion, flank me on either side. Is it the dream? Or is it the independence of light shining through the window that makes me carry on?
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Ill. Hours on the Horizon
Trained as an atomic archaeologist, he studies civilizations that have destroyed themselves with atomic bombs. Upon one site alone he discovers seven post-atomic cities. He can reconstruct literatures from the amount of carbon in the melted sand.
An important article by a brilliant senator in a popular magazine addresses this same sensibility whereby one cannot even visit the moon without leaving behind a junk car.
Why is the red planet called Mars? Blood is red. Blood is blue. Dawn breaks on the Nile. The pyramids cast large triangular shadows on the cool sands.
The wingless, male Egyptian Sphinx confronts the winged, female Greek Sphinx. Her malignant squeeze strangles the answers from Theban males who just do not know.
And the Chorus chants: "If Oedipus knows, then Oedipus will be king."
And the gods murmur: "If Oedipus knows, then Oedipus will die a death that not even a Judeo-Christian god would put his son or daughter through."
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Illl. Imperial High Noon
Details in the carving indicate to me that symbol may be an earlier inscription that has been altered by a later pharaoh. Other idols have been broken, shattered like ice on ponds in winter and early spring. Erosion leaves its own relief upon the mountains at the edge of the desert. Here Nubian tribesmen worship the uraeus. The wearer of that symbol upon his helmet commands thirty sandstone statues cut. Later, a jealous Nefertiti orders them pulled down and destroyed.
Anatomical peculiarities remain an inbred result of the first atomic war.
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V. Twilight of the Pharaohs
The sun comes up out of the red sea, but sets on the western horizon for several weeks. The pharaoh arises from his illness determined to spend every day in ceremony and every night in banquet. Since that time the solar disk has been a holy symbol.
Alexandria disappears. Egypt becomes Virginia. Diana and Mars once reigned in temples. All the banks in America religiously use Greek temple architecture in their designs. Art is intimidation. Some of the images will be difficult to assimilate. They will have to be destroyed.
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VI. Arabs and Archaeologists
Philosophers fill the air with angels. The earth ovulates with geologists and petroleum engineers. Millionaires reside in home in Paris and San Francisco.
Minarets from the mosques cut crooked shadows from the blue and fading sky. After Waterloo, Frenchmen recollect a Napoleon who had fled in fear of the pyramids and the Sphinx. The conquering future emperor portrays himself on fancy, hand-painted china plates. On frescoes artists paint both eyes on the same side of the face. Black straight hair is dark as coal.
I see the household servant baking bread. Another brews beer. I shudder when I behold the skinning of the ox. I hear the tearing of the flesh from the meat. Blood runs red into pools. Entrails steam in cool air.
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VII. The Past Recaptured
Nearly a mile above where trees never grow, I find the skull at the top of Mount Ararat. Imbedded through the cranial area, a petrified wooden stake! The gold-plated wood, carved and inset with a decorative patchwork of multicolored glass suggests delicacy. Osirus' symbol remains the frequent motif.
Two symbols, the vulture and the cobra most often repeat the need for flight. The hunter, naked except for loincloth, creeps straight through the marble upon which he is engraved--a monument to the monetary strength when madmen control time.
Beneath winter skies in this first year of perhaps the last years, people sit in houses before open fires to keep warm and together in winter.
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Larry D. Griffin
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