Today's poem is by Ricardo Pau-Llosa

The Mummifier's Mummy
       

Like the tailor's suit or the chef's meal, simplicity
signals the master. No coifs or vivid tinctures
brow the face that studied death, sure
in his craft. A clutched, worn tool, for humility
beneath the stitched rictus of his vesseled
prayer. A pupil perhaps, or a rival, performed
this task and, honoring what the master scorned,
urned him basely. With him terse was sealed
the knowledge of what little hope there is
in ritual—that private magic that makes symbols
of things. Neither can we extract balms
from edicts that Illusion, by reason, is all that is.
Even shadows lunge at this leathered state,
crouched in clay, pretending no better fate.

Tweet

Copyright © 2024 Ricardo Pau-Llosa All rights reserved
from Fleeing Actium
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission