36.

Adoration of Ra

Rejoicing in the houses. The sound of brass bells on dancing ankles. The hips of women sway through dusty streets. Day upon day the sun is risen. Day upon day the sun will rise. Day upon day this heat on adobe walls and the splay of light on Osiris. Morning stars and eventide. Chants ring through the valley and across the sands to rise to the altar of heaven. The soul of Osiris walks with wind into the temples of gods. He sets sail in the boat of morning sun. He comes to port at eventide. He twists and twines through star-studded waters, the sound of his oars the ssh-sssh of wind. The sun beats on and on like a tireless heart.

Blessings on thee, hawk, fierce and beautiful as love, whose horizons are the edges of memory so vast a man gets lost. Blessings on thee, beetle sun, which rolls into life every day kicking six legs and humming your shiny ball of song. This world is a little patch of ground you travel with no haste. The sun has burst upon the land, light yellow dust on the head of a bee. The gods are all drunk with light and singing. They crown each other king. The lady of the great house weaves garlands on his forehead. Vines and flowers of the twelve cities meet themselves. “My lord,” she says, “the sun is bright today. It hovers between your shoulders.” The idea of himself travels with him, affixed like the figurehead of a ship. His enemies beat themselves with sticks, tumble and sink beneath black waters. From the netherworld the dead arise to glimpse his shining face. The sea is pregnant with form. And the belly of sky is beautiful.

Every day, the sun. Every day. And I walk east in the garden to see you, west through the country to be with you. Oh sun, my head fills with light. Do not turn me from your easy lust, whole in the sky, white with heat. Do not bind me in sheets of darkness, a worm in the brown cake of earth. My hands are bread I have made every day. The sun spins into my heart, a place where sparrows nest. I am ridiculous and rolling on the ground, pleased with such company. Every day, the sun on the wall, light lingering on a ripe fig. I am he who worships the sun, a space in my heart a bird could fill. I am one who listens to the grass speaking in the garden. May I chew the green blade of eternity in a garden filled with sun. May I walk into fire and be burned like kernels of wheat, ground into the pulp of existence. May the sun pound and bake me brown as bread. May I rise like bread every day.

In the field with my cattle, my shadow sinks into black earth and rises. The smell of things growing. The sky and horizon part like waking lovers; like a child, the sun rises from their sleep. The world watches its steps—old man, old child, old king, sun passing in the sky, light of all that can be said, shadow of hidden things. Every face watches, every eye turns; resplendent dawn and evening. Such passion is existence. Every day my liege rides his boat, glory dripping like water from an oar. Every day the streets chum with people, every face turning. Such power can not be measured. Such love can not be told. Unspeakable grace in the fields and cities. I dip my bread in milk and eat.

Mantis, this landscape is hidden from all but the most holy eye. Oh sun going out to the sea's edge over the crest of mountain, what might a weary man call home but the light in his head, the scroll in his heart? What darklings wait with blood red teeth within the walls of his sacred home? Such country the sun has seen, truth like memory or love. Such colors of robes some women wear, more mauve than grapes their gowns and eyes. What is hidden belongs to the sun. It is too much for a man to know. It is Ra who gathers the world together, who holds and beholds with his eye, this juxtaposition of vegetation and air, the thousand colors of prayer and stone. Having sprung from formless water, he takes his shape in fire. He springs from the mouth of the horizon as if he were the first word he uttered. May he string his words into song. May he roll through the heavens like music. And for as long as the sun is singing, may the strings of my soul hum like a lyre.

Sun, your number is one multiplied by millions. I am but a man with my thousand longings for unity. May we never cease to be. May there be no time in which a man must count the days toward some end. Oh, that life could be more than its fragments. No before and no after, no exaltation but in the timeless one. The sun strides over heaven crossing distances of millions of years and the hundreds of thousands of millions…one day of the sun. He set-rises, set-rises over thousands of cities, trees and mountains and men. The distance of the instant. He has made an end to hours and likewise counted them. In the morning earth fills with light. Law and baptism. The one of us all endures. It is our work under the sun.

Speak of the rising heart of carnelian. Red heart of a living god, old priest in an ancient tomb, an image scratched into muscle and blood. On this stony plateau we stand, all our days like beads of lapis strung on the throat of sky. We stand—existent cities washed with color, ash of night fallen underground. The great world pours out its unguents and the little world is made great. A shout among many people rises on a day of splendor when the sun folds back on itself. He deepens and lengthens and thickens, moulding his body with light. The sun grinds itself like corn. Tendrils of fire seek their limits of light. This is the color of time, the joy and pain of a birthing mother. He is born in the form of Ra. He creates himself on his mother's thigh.

May I reach an everlasting heaven and walk in the legend of mountains with thoughts quiet as deer. May I meet myself in every vegetable and rock quickened by tendrils of light. Holy and perfect is the world which lives by fire in the embrace of the carnelian heart. May I walk with the sun until eventide, forgetting the reason of hours. May I burst into light like a purple flower remembered by a lover.

The sun has risen like gold or wheat, aurora in the land of his birth, splendor in a country of sky. His mother is draped in a gauze of air, the disc revolves in her hand like a bowl of meal. Egypt will be fed. Great light bursts on the horizon and men who've slept in the dark with stomachs empty as night rush into the streets hungry, happy to eat morning. Ten thousand thousand fingers wash in the flood, ten thousand thousand grapes and olives feed on living water. In the towns and in the temples there is a festival, flood of wine and flowers, one song many lutes are playing. A woman suckles her baby, while her husband drunk with meat and beer lies in the shade of a fig tree, singing praises to her inner thigh.

Might of might. Splendor of splendor. This is the terror inherent in love: that such power may exist without reason, that death may be feared and lusted for as a woman, that passion gives rise to passion. I am moved by desire as if a boat transported me from horizon to horizon. What I have done for love, let it be held against me. I am a man whose heart is full. I am a man empty of sin. It is life I desire. My lust for it and I enter the heart of the mountain together. Together we are judged by shining beasts and they say, “There walks he who loves his life.”

One day with a shout I'll rise through the sky. My voice will mingle with air. I'll cross horizons. With silver wings I'll enter the realm of magic. Within the temple of mountain and sky, corn grows amid earth's yellow scars. This is the sacred cathedral of Ra into which men long to enter. My name recalls the countless stars under which new lovers kiss. Death ferries me to a distant shore while striped fish spawn on turquoise waters, while black fish leap in white rivers.

The universe is drawn in circles. The memory of chariot wheels clacking across small stones foreshadows the asp's death as he wraps himself around the wheel. He is crushed by its embrace. The air crackles when Ra is within. And sailors, who've known only cities by the sea and the whip of the rope and sail, come to moor at last amid a crush of flowers and rejoice and weep and go on. The days before and the days after fill with the odor of pomegranates. The heart ripens like fruit, falls and breaks. Sweet meat for the lips of gods. On such a day one glances into the sky and finds the eye of Ra looks back. One finds loaves of bread on fine reed mats and the eye of Ra looks back. The air crackles. The sun beats on and on.