34.

Awakening Osiris

Air and earth are my horizons. What lies between is what I am. Oh, infinite form of being! beast and stone and vegetable—the way a man may stand in his garden or dance by the river while wakes of small boats rock the reeds, the cities and the people in them, gods who walk in white linen like women under the blue stone of heaven.

I am the priest in a hidden house, guide to other worlds. I am the idea of myself in my mother's belly, a trembling star in the bright memory of morning, a grain of sand blown east. I am the husband of Isis: woman, widow and witch. On her lips are the charms of ripening wheat; from her arms fly flocks of birds. With a word she drives the snakes from the river and the boats sail far to its mouth.

Air is what I breathe and earth is where I stand. I have given myself to Amentet. It is white with heat. The world is bright as metal. Dead men rise to breathe air and stare into my face, already a yellow disk on the eastern horizon.