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Sport 39: 2011
We were at the British Museum?
We were at the British Museum?
There is the smallest grain of something on the sheet
I have to keep moving away from only to meet
again somewhere else in this hotel room bed
and when I finally shift myself clear
there is a shiver in my ear
and my feet itch,
and my scalp,
as if there is something walking
page 286
from hair to hair.
Or is it my skin crawling?
And is it just going to crawl
around and around the edges of me
or is it going to crawl free
leaving me
to wake in the morning
unravelled, the bits of me that have travelled
not even me? And
if all night I have seen
what they see, calling this dreaming
would be like failing to see the holes between
the atoms and calling it beauty.
Oh, but that really is beautiful.
We were at the British Museum?
And the explanation offered
in the Egyptian room
kept dividing into three:
body, heart, spirit is just the start,
then spirit into ka, ba, and akh,
ka, the spiritual double of the body
pictured as a pair of arms,
ba, the spirit that travels, from
the body, in the night
and on beyond the life,
and akh, the spirit that aspires to be immortal,
the possibility
open as the holes between atoms
that human might be god …
In the meantime, the resin and wrappings
for the body, entrapping
the itchy ba.
There was a mummified fish!
For the mummified cats?
Or to allow for fish ba
to flow to and from fish body,
merrily merrily merrily
without itch or seam?