At other times, an unwrapped mummy held  
a surprise: parts of animal skeletons,  
which were mingled with the human remains. 

This was the way I served the Pharaoh, God of the Two Lands,
this was how I provided the God a service for all of my days  
in his protection: I was keeper of one of the houses  
where the soldiers and the overseers would come for their beer
at the end of a shift, when the Boat of the Sun descended  
into the nether part of its journey. As they labored  
in the hard press of the light, I stayed inside, and cared  
for the rough clay cups and the customary onions.  
As they broke themselves, and healed, and toughened,  
laboring with rock, with war, with the chase, I grew  
increasingly soft: my belly, like a ball of paste, could take  
a seal-imprint. I was proud of this, I added to it  
with lotions, I was a lotus in dew. And then I died,  
and awoke in this skin you could thump on like a casket.

This is how much time is between us: you  
believe in a flexible, self-willed destiny. Yes, and whenever  
the animal rises up in you, it’s only in a dream, and not  
as a blood tie, not as your deity finally  
taking you into its own beast fist. For me.... How,  
you may ask, did I afford my luxurious lotions  
—and the pendant-eyes of lapis with which I purchased love  
from the temple girls? It was easy: I watered the beer.  
I watched for customers who dozed, I filched their pouches,  
or better, I had the girls do it. And over the days,  
the many days, what you would call my heart became  
a tooth; my heart became a chill, acidic hunger;  
a belly; a jar of sour green need; a stone of a heart.  
And after I died, they gave me the breast of the crocodile.

    Ontario Review #58