33.

Ra Rising

The numbers of the sun are many; its hours are infinite. Its names are names of things alive. What has form is a part of Ra. With my own eyes I saw him—a brilliant hawk flying into the risings and settings of suns. I tasted god like soup dripping from a ladle. I felt his grace like three lyres humming. Like a single thread that wraps itself around me, he becomes the whole cloth of my being. I am made lively as onions and olives. I walk at peace between lilies and stones.

The strident sun walks through a field of stars. The beautiful one sings in two halves of the sky. Old women sit in their doorways and sniff the breezes. The wind that moves the boats, moves them.

Ten thousand, thousand sticks of light have been raised against the darkness. When the demon falls, his beard is cut. His sinews are tom by the knife.

In this moment the silence of Egypt gathers between the mountains and at the depths of the river. Earth trembles, voiceless as the egg from which the new world rises. Ra is in the wind. He speaks when the earth is silent and he alone existed until he named the name of things. River, he said, and river lived. Mountain. Beetle. Fisherman. From his tongue spring words of water. The river quakes with the sound of his voice. The east wind is the air escaping from his nose. The west wind is a long sigh from his mother. I am fortified by their breathing. My heart bursts into light like a seed. Such things are made every day: duck, mandrake, raisin. Grape, pomegranate and melon. Cypress, palm, Osiris.