[M]y face is open; my heart is upon its throne; I utter words, and I know; in very truth, […]I shall not die a second time in the underworld.
—The Book of the Dead, XLIV:1–61
i. Megas, Megas, Megistos
These bones of ours are statues
empowered by souls, stone machines for
living fed on existence, bloodless fraternal
meals, what produces fruit in our
hearts to transcend our own bodies
that we might see our Selves.
When Eve was in Adam there
was no death, not yet, not
until he pictured her and imagined
it, alphabetically speaking, “after” comes “before”,
art serves like caged heat to
split apart the jars it holds.
A pouring forth of speech scattered
like seed into broken earth, these
things teach with symbols what is
great, what is great, what is
very great, that truth is not
begotten but made, know these things.
ii. A Head like a Shattered Bowl
Windworn minds blown, light and dark
warring has torn open what was
kept from showing, in their nakedness
our first parents bared what was
left over from Creation before sewing
on shadows to eclipse making’s growing.
Vagrants cloaked in the clothing of
initiates, ever since their exile even
their kids have been wearing the
mark of sin, mendicants begging forgiveness
forgetting it was them who came
up with him to worship man.
Breaking in the crater, drinking in
the æther, we greet our maker
whenever we master what seems incompatible
with each other’s weaknesses, that together
our theft of fire was an
act of defiance justifying its cause.
__________
1The Book of the Dead, “Chapter XLIV: The Chapter of not dying a second time in the underworld”, [Verses] 1–6, in “Translation: The Book of the Dead: Plate XVI” of The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum. The Egyptian Text with Interlinear Transliteration and Translation, a Running Translation, Introduction, etc. by E. A. Wallis Budge, Late Keeper of Assyrian and Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum, published at New York by Dover Publications, Inc. in 2015; page 315.
Jono Borden 