Biography of a Mummy

[BobBradshaw]

V2:
Biography of a Mummy


X-rays reveal poles thrust up his spine,
the poles dating from the Dark Ages.
His lower jaw is missing, stolen
and ground, perhaps, to a fine powder
and sold to Chinese traders.
The poles would have held him together,
brittle toes and fingers broken
as they stashed him back into his case.
He reappeared in 1893,
a freak in a side show.
He was sold to a Mr. Monjeau,
a professor, in 1895.
A butt of classroom jokes,
he became an heirloom
for Mr. Monjeau's sister, living
like a recluse in her attic.
He made it West somehow in 1930,
and made a career of small parts
in horror movies, popping up in them
for the next twenty years.
Somehow he retired to a basement
of a museum, and lived in anonymity
until we found him in 1991.
Every day we devote ourselves
to him and his exhibit.  Like Ramses,
he too believed in an afterlife…
but how could he have foreseen
the one that he has led?
While children and their parents
imagine his immortality,
a spackled Orion rising above him
into an exquisite and eternal sky,
I often wonder how long I will live.
Sometimes I think of the 4000 year old
Sumerian harbor at Abu Tbeirah
which vanished slowly
into the desert
air.


V1:
Biography of a Mummy


X-rays reveal poles thrust up his spine,
the poles dating from the Dark Ages.
His lower jaw is missing, stolen
and ground, perhaps, to a fine powder
and sold to Chinese traders.
The poles would have held him together,
brittle toes and fingers broken
as they stashed him back into his case.
He reappeared in 1893,
a freak in a side show.
He was sold to a Mr. Monjeau,
a professor, in 1895.
A butt of classroom jokes,
he became an heirloom
for Mr. Monjeau's sister, living
like a recluse in her attic.
He made it West somehow in 1930,
and made a career of small parts
in horror movies, popping up in them
for the next twenty years.
Somehow he retired to a basement
of a museum, and lived in anonymity
until we found him in 1991.
Every day we devote ourselves
to him and his exhibit.  Like Ramses,
he too believed in an afterlife…
but how could he have foreseen
the one that he has led?
While children and their parents
imagine his immortality,
a spackled Orion rising above him
into an exquisite and eternal sky,
I sometimes think of the 4000 year old
Sumerian harbor at Abu Tbeirah
which vanished slowly
into the desert
air.

[BobBradshaw]

Note: I have added a line to the closing.

[Billy]

Like the revision, Bob. This poem evokes so many layers of thought, and so imaginative. Yes, how will we be remembered.

[BobBradshaw]

Thanks, Billy. It’s an old poem, the last third heavily revised.