New Kingdom

Tahrir Square, Cairo, Feb 2, 2011     Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

New Kingdom

Bricks of mud and wattle crumble leaving dust,

sand and wind scour the marks of men from stone.

So many years the gods have watched,

doing the nothing that gods do so well.

Now hands that raised the pyramids

fight hands that robbed the tombs,

and Time leaves the old gods behind,

empty in the grave.

They dream what they have always seen;

yesterday pulled across the dusty sky

to tomorrow in the sun’s chariot endlessly racing

while the people, brown and small

work the land, no more to them than clay

ushabtis that serve so their betters can live idle.

The dream is broken; still, the empty dead don’t see.

The world has bought itself new gods,

venal and hungry, with books of laws or checks

and new lists of things forbidden,or compulsory,

who care nothing for the harvest,

who prefer what the world prefers:

that men draw oil from the ground instead of grain,

sow the seeds of war and spill blood as inevitably,

as carelessly as the Nile makes mud.

Now new gods or no gods watch stones 

draw living blood instead of wear dead faces 

or god’s names, watch bricks 

thrown and broken against bone,

and men drunk with power, armored in foreign gold

burning the future, hiding from time.

The preserver becomes the despoiler

and the land bleeds.

They watch, or they don't

but the world watches to see

if Time is the master, unavoidable,

heavy with days, come to

break those weaker than water

who pretend to be gods, and

raise those stronger than clay

who fight the long fight to be free.

February 2011