Transcription

Hands can touch the page,
Eyes discern and classify the script:
Curl of a g, slant of a d,
Forked ascenders on an oblique loop—
The scripted mystery reduced
To date and hand and place
And accurate transcription.

Illuminated letters cup
A distillation of the world.
Tiny figures illustrate
Eve’s desire and Adam’s fall;
From the corner peers a nameless face,
Uncaught by any reading.
One lacuna, one smudged word,
And sightless freedom seeps into the page
Never to be fully known or mastered.

One page, one book, one Codex Mysterium
Is undeciphered still;
Vellum blossoms in my mind,
And in the dark, there is one string
Of ever-foreign words
Inscribed upon my bones.

Ushabtis stand serenely in the case,
Arms locked in protection that avails
No less in harsh museum lights
Then in the shrouding darkness of the tomb.
Their sideways eyes cannot be met,
The hieroglyphs upon their skin
Lie undeciphered still,
Unknown and therefore uncompelled,
Safe: judgment eternally postponed—
Summoned by their spells
But free from other voices.

I would be an Ushabti, forever locked,
My sideways eyes unmet;
An unknown codex with a last and unturned page,
Illuminations blooming into silence,
My script forever meaningless, secure

And

I would be known, deciphered and unlocked
My stone protections broken
My last page turned, my final word read out
The last curve of my script descried
The words upon my bones pronounced
Deciphered and unwritten on your breath—
But for one final instant
Lovely in your eyes.